Film Review: Ant Man and the Wasp

The most ANTicipated sequel of the year, HAHAHA. The best string of unnecessary synonyms to describe this film? Huge, bloated, ungainly, obese and colossal. It is almost the opposite of the first film. The story takes place in between Captain America: Civil War and Infinity War, with the Sultan of Sarcasm—Paul Rudd—returning to play the title character. Rudd is, unsurprisingly excellent, as both an actor and a script-writer, he basically holds this movie up alone. As a die-hard fan of his since the 40 Year Old Virgin days, I couldn’t help but love every Ruddy minute of Paul’s screen-time. But that’s about the entirety of the movie’s appeal.

The (sort-of?) villains vary between being wildly inconsistent to blundering into walls. The score sounds like it was made on Garageband by somebody’s cousin who is “real mean at making beats”, with no real attempt to make it unique or even interesting. This movie feels like it had money to burn, with huge sets, unnecessary stunts and actions scenes. We are even blessed with TWO marvel universe debutants, with the enormous talents of Laurence Fishburne AND (the only Catwoman that matters) Michelle Pfeiffer, taking supporting roles. Even they, however, are burdened with some lazy and inconsistent writing that leaves their characters stuck in the mud. Do they succeed in their quests? Do they survive the third-act climax? Do rhetorical questions work as well in a written format? The ultimate answer is unfortunately, nobody really cares all that much.

In summary, if you are a Marvel nerd (check) and/or you love Paul Rudd (check check), you’ll probably enjoy this movie.

3.5 stars