Ant-Man and the Wasp

Directed by Peyton Reed.

2018. Rated PG-13, 118 minutes.

Cast:

Paul Rudd

Evangeline Lilly

Michael Douglas

Hannah John-Kamen

Michelle Pfeiffer

Laurence Fishburne

Michael Pena

Walton Goggins

Tip "T.I." Harris

Judy Greer

Bobby Cannavale

Randall Park

If you saw Ant-Man, and this is a spoiler warning for that movie if you didn’t, you know that Scott (Rudd) saves the day as Ant-Man by doing what he was previously told was impossible – entering and returning from the sub-atomic quantum realm. This is, of course, where Janet (Pfeiffer), the wife of Hank Pym (Douglas), creator of the Ant-Man tech, has been lost and presumed dead for thirty years. Scott’s success gives Hank and his daughter Hope (Lilly)…uh…hope that Janet might still be alive and there might be a way to save her. But that’s far from the only problem. Scott is on house arrest, very close to getting off when Hank and Hope come calling for his help. They themselves are fugitives from the law. On top of all that, a dangerous new entity called Ghost (John-Kamen) is kicking their tails all over town in an attempt to get a hold of their tech for reasons unbeknownst to them.

In baseball, the best pitchers are often those who keep hitters off-balance by effectively varying the speed and location of their pitches. By itself, an 80 mph change-up a bit on the outside might not be so difficult to hit, or just not swing at. When that pitch comes after a pair of 95 mph fastballs on the inside part of the plate, it’s suddenly a real challenge for most batters. If you’re not a baseball fan and I just lost you, I’ll get you back. Those pitchers are changing the hitters’ point of view. This movie does the same to its viewers. We don’t just get the world from Ant-Man’s perspective while he’s tiny. We also get it while he’s gigantic, and lots of switching between the two. Things other than our heroes also change sizes. Hank Pym’s entire building goes from skyscraper to roll away luggage. Cars and trucks go from full to Matchbox sized. We become like that hitter, caught off-guard by the ever-changing the point of view. The techno-wizardry on display is a huge part of Ant-Man and the Wasp doing what sequels do - give us more of everything. When it comes to the action and visual fx, this is a win. Whenever things crank up, our eyes are dazzled and worked to near exhaustion as they dart all over the screen. We become like that hitter, caught off-guard by ever-changing the point of view.

When things slow down, the movie’s problems are exposed. The two main storylines are both fine but suffer from competing for the spotlight. It’s a competition clearly won by the Ghost plot. The cat-and-mouse between Ghost, our heroes, and the police drive the narrative. Whenever we switch over to rescuing Janet the film screeches to a halt as it devolves into long scenes of button-pushing and hand-wringing. It doesn’t help that these scenes were also peppered with loads of pseudo-scientific jargon between Hank and Hope. The excuse for this is making a joke using Scott’s lack of education as a punchline. It works the first time or two, but by time ten thousand, it gets old.

“Scott’s an idiot” is not the only joke that fails. Much of the humor is not up to snuff. There are long sucessions of flat jokes. The percentage of ones that land as they’re intended is far lower than in the original Ant-Man. This is a problem in a franchise that props itself up on its jokes. The sequel takes too many of its cues in some places, like the aforementioned concentration on Scott’s intellectual deficiencies. I get that’s going to be a running gag for however long Ant-Man is part of the MCU. Unfortunately, this movie beat it to death. In other places, it doesn’t take enough cues from its predecessor. The funniest bits from that movie were the stories told by Michael Pena’s character. Here, we get one really late as a tack-on and it is not nearly as effective. To be sure, there are some jokes that work. The most fun is the banter between Laurence Fishburne's Bill Foster and Hank Pym. There's just not enough of it to go around.

The parts of Ant-Man and the Wasp that work cancel out the parts that don’t. What we’re left with is a movie that’s not a complete waste of time, but certainly lesser than both its singular franchise predecessor, Ant-Man and its most recent MCU predecessors, Avengers: Infinity War and Black Panther. As a time-passer, it’s perfectly fine, but adds almost nothing to the MCU narrative. In that sense, it only explains why Ant-Man wasn’t in Infinity War. It does have value beyond that, however. The addition of three more strong females into this universe is a definite plus. I know Hope was already in the first movie, but she really comes into her own, here. Throughout the film, the best fighting consistently comes from her and Ghost, the second strong female character. Ghost is a very intriguing character I hope to see more of. Finally, there’s Janet. She proves to be Hank’s equal on every level, if not his superior. These three ladies make the movie everything it is. Unfortunately, the film’s other issues are too much to completely overcome. I don’t hate it. I don’t love it. Meh.