You'll be buzzing
...at the wit and wizardry of this Ant-tastic sequel that punches well above its tiny hero’s weight (and has an alarming sting in the tail)
Ant-Man And The Wasp
Cert: 12A 1hr 58 mins
Towards the end of Ant-Man And The Wasp, two remarkable things occur. One is an end credit postscript – a tradition in Marvel superhero adaptations – that produced gasps in the screening I attended and will certainly have devotees waiting anxiously for next year’s as-yet untitled Avengers film.
The other is the appearance of a rather beautiful older woman played by an actress who I didn’t recognise. I made a mental note to look up who it was. Turns out it was, er… Michelle Pfeiffer, prompting something of an inner existential crisis. When a male film critic can no longer recognise Michelle Pfeiffer… well, it doesn’t bear thinking about.
But while I worry privately about that, let’s move swiftly on, as the important things are that she is perfectly good, still very beautiful, and Ant-Man And The Wasp is an awful lot of summer fun.
Just as he did with the original Ant-Man film in 2015, director Peyton Reed has had to pull off that unenviable balancing act – making the idea of a bug-sized superhero (and this time he comes with flying female sidekick, the Wasp) entertaining without reducing the whole thing to abject silliness. It was a trick he achieved handsomely the first time and, despite one or two more moments when the comedy gets a little too broad, he does very nearly as well with this at times spectacular sequel.
Much of its success comes down to the quality of the acting, led by Paul Rudd, of course, as reformed thief turned tiny-but-mighty superhero Scott Lang. Rudd – who claims a screenwriting credit too – is likeable, funny and plays it with just the right amount of tongue in cheek not to undo all his good work. But he gets great support from the likes of Michael Douglas as Dr Hank Pym, inventor of all that shrinking technology, Evangeline Lilly (from TV’s Lost and The Hobbit), who, as Dr Pym’s kick-ass daughter, Hope, has more to do now that she’s won her wings and become the Wasp, and also from Michael Pena, who is very funny as Scott’s business associate, Luis. Mind you, Randall Park runs him close in the comedy stakes as the determined but wonder- fully trusting FBI agent, Jimmy Woo, who knows that Scott/Ant-Man is up to something but can never work out quite what.
Stealing almost every scene she is in, however, is Hannah John-Kamen, who plays a fascinating character called the Ghost. Injured as a child by a laboratory accident that killed her parents and left her phasing in and out of the normal dimensions, the Ghost, who also answers to the name of Ava, is a young woman doomed to a short life. Unless, of course, she can get her hands on the same bit of high-tech kit that
Dr Pym needs to bring back his wife, missing for some 30 years, from the sub-atomic level she disappeared to when she was trying to prevent a nuclear war.
Two desperate parties after the same thing, which just happens to be contained in a building that, thanks to Dr Pym, can be shrunk to the size of a small wheeled suitcase?
Now we have an Ant-Man film on our hands.
Slightly to my surprise I loved the tiny cars that make the San Francisco chase sequences so extraordinary – and funny – but was less happy about the supersized Ant-Man who wades in (literally) down at Fisherman’s Wharf.
But that’s a rare moment of misjudgement in a film that may have a pint-sized hero but, fun-wise, punches well above its weight.