Ant-Man (2015)

Marvel’s other big 15 summer flick “The Avengers: Age of Ultron” was so dense with heroes and villains, watching it near required a flow chart even for a die-hard geek such as myself. So Marvel goes literally small with “Ant-Man,” the latest hero to hit the screen. 

Paul Rudd is Scott Lang, a Robin Hood ex-con recruited to take on the heroic identity of Ant-Man –- a hero who can shrink to the size of an ant, retain incredible strength, and control insects –- by a genius inventor/scientist (Michael Douglas) who once wore the suit. 

Aged out, Douglas’ Hank Pym (the same character also is The Beast in the X-Men films) needs Rudd’s Lang to steal vital tech from a greedy CEO (Corey Stoll) up to no good. That’s it. Not a city is destroyed. Just a building. And a house. 

And I’m thankful for that. The epic destruction climaxes can get tiring. And, thankfully, tongues are in cheek for much of the running time.A climatic fight involves a Thomas the Tank Engine being thrown about. From the eyes of a child, it’s a tiny toy falling off a track. To our hero, it’s a devastating near-death encounter. That scene kicks. 

Now the magnifying glass. Director Peyton Red infamously picked up the lead reins from geek-favorite Edgar Wright (“Shaun of the Dead”) after the latter quit, squashed by Marvel Corp. meddling. 

The cracks show. That Thomas daft bit is pure Wright. But when the main story stops hard to intro an Avengers sidebar, the movie flops. Anthony Mackie’s Falcon appears, Chris Evans’ Captain America gets name dropped. The whole plot of “Avengers 2” is discussed in a conversation so awkward Douglas squirms. He has no idea what he is mouthing off. 

Look, I dig Marvel, I love Marvel, and it wants a tie-in universe seamless and pure, and I want what Marvel wants. Just like the comic books where stories such as “Secret Wars” crossed a dozen or so titles. I get it. 

But, left alone and given free will, Wright’s movie may have been the biggest blast of Marvel fresh air since “Guardians of the Galaxy.” Wild daft fun; us not knowing what the hell might happen, or who might say what. That movie felt like a daring gamble.

This is flat boring, not a bet. Not a single surprise moment, Thomas engine aside. When hero Ant-Man can’t stop talking about how much he loves his little princess girl, who the hell is the bad guy going to go after? This is a screenplay beaten into submission. By committee. 

It doesn’t help that Stoll’s villain, who becomes the menacing Yellow Jacket, with the similar powers to Ant-Man, never once registers. He’s psycho from minute one, a barking madman who hardly seems capable of running a treadmill, much less a massive company. And how ever did he become a super villain? Where did he train? How? 

Enough bitching, what does work here is Rudd’s solid performance. He’s likable. He’s funny. But he looks like he can handle himself in a fight. Douglas is spry as well. He throws a punch. It looks good. 

Also –- and I hate to go happy on special effects when story suffers so -- but the shots of Ant-Man tiny against backgrounds that are macrophotography blown out is crazy fun. That Thomas train, or Ant-Man using a Lifesaver to save his life. (And young Michael Douglas is epic!) Reed and his VFX team knock it out of the ballpark. 

Kudos to the computer geeks and camera crews. But no matter how good the art was in the thousands of comic books I collected and read, the stories kept bringing back. And this story has nothing to sell. B-