Ant-Man and the Wasp

Ant-Man and the Wasp

Scott “Ant-Man” Lang might be a superhero, but he’s constantly reminded that his achievements are too qualified because he never saves the day without alienating those around him, making his self-worth shrinks to nothing.

His character-defining flaws become more obvious in the messy, but satisfying super-sequel “Ant-Man and the Wasp” whenever he tries to puff out his chest. That one time he helped Captain America (he’s played by Paul Rudd, by the way) but only after stealing a shrinking super-suit from his reluctant mentor Hank Pym (Michael Douglas). But saved the world in “Captain America: Civil War” without consulting with his training and romantic Hope van Dyne (Evangeline Lilly). He is starting up his own security business in San Francisco but is under heavily-monitored house arrest. Like writer Nick Spencer’s recent run on the Ant-Man comics, “Ant-Man and the Wasp” presents Lang as a hapless but well-meaning small fry who tries, and often fails, to live up to expectations.

Macho pride may be a generic flaw for a superhero movie, but “Ant-Man and the Wasp” is that rare super-film where actions have consequences, and characters overcome their ego-driven tendencies long enough to work together as a raggedy team. Supporting characters like smug weapons dealer Sonny Burch (Walton Goggins), mysterious super-villain Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen), clueless FBI agent Jimmy Woo (Randall Park), and Pym’s estranged former colleague Dr. Bill Foster (Laurence Fishburne) frequently throw Lang and Pym off their best-laid plans, particularly their shared goal of securing the equipment that will allow Pym to rescue his long-missing wife Janet (Michelle Pfeiffer) from the trippy sub-atomic and very dangerous Quantum Realm.

But the most charming aspect of “Ant-Man and the Wasp” is how digressive and tangent-filled Lang’s story becomes. It’s a revolving door of well-meaning outsiders here comes his ex-wife Maggie (Judy Greer) and her amiable wet blanket husband Paxton (Bobby Cannavale) with Lang’s eager-to-please daughter Cassie (Abby Ryder Fortson) and neurotic colleagues, like Lang’s “X-Con” security crew team of Kurt (David Dastmalchian), Dave (T.I.), and Luis (Michael Peña, predictably stealing every scene he’s in).

And many of these characters are also struggling to suppress their own habitual catastrophizing: if Ghost doesn’t steal and fire up Pym’s equipment now, she will die; if Pym doesn’t get Lang’s help in recovering his equipment, his wife will vanish; if Lang doesn’t get back to his house before Woo returns to check up on him, his new post-“Ant-Man” life is over.

Thankfully, director Peyton Reed (“Bring It On,” “Down with Love”) and the film’s five credited screenwriters capably (though not always gracefully) juggle these various plot points. They don’t develop every thread, but they do follow through with enough subplots and ideas that most moviegoers will at least know who everybody is by the time “Ant-Man and the Wasp” inevitably devolves into a series of well-choreographed set pieces.

In the first half of the film, Reed and his writers do a number of scenes where they simply try to move their messy plot along without actually growing Lang as a character. In these early scenes, he loses control of his super-suit at random and acts like a sulky Peter Parker; also, sometimes he behaves like a relatively mature caregiver who loves taking care of his daughter and sighs heavily whenever he can’t independently figure out how to fix his domestic problems. The difference between those two conflicting aspects of Lang’s personality is something that arguably “Ant-Man and the Wasp” does not do enough to reconcile.

Which brings us to: The first half of “Ant-Man and the Wasp,” which relies most heavily on expository dialogue to push its plot forward, definitely feels like it was written by committee specifically five credited writers. That might be why I’ve spent so much more time praising this movie’s characters and ideas than its brick and mortar storytelling; like many Marvel Studios films, it is occasionally marred by rote cinematography (by Dante Spinotti, Michael Mann regular director of photography!) or over-edited set pieces.

But only occasionally. “Ant-Man and the Wasp” really comes alive after its creators stop setting up their shaggy dog plot and start plugging better ideas into dynamic car chases, fight scenes and comedic routines (I especially love the bit where Lang, after being knocked unconscious and tied up, asks his kidnapper to help him video-chat with Cassie).

So for two hours or so Reed takes us on a long strange trip with some very sympathetic crime-fighters in which we ultimately wind up seeing almost everything but what this movie could have been. It may not be the best anything in full view here but at least in part there are things that work as well as they need to for ‘Ant-Man’ Et Al II: Commercially acceptable entertainment.

Watch Ant-Man and the Wasp For Free On Gomovies.