‘Ant-Man 2’ gets the critics raving
Paul Rudd’s return as the sizeshifting superhero has been given a solid thumbs up
Come midsummer, sometimes the most appealing thing inside the multiplex is the cinematic equivalent of cotton candy. That is the consensus among critics filing the first reviews for Ant-Man and the Wasp, the Marvel sequel coming to the the UAE on Thursday. And “lightweight,” in this case, is no insult, as some film critics say that on the heels of this year’s monumental Black Panther and momentous Avengers: Infinity War, they welcome a change-of-pace Marvel movie that instead leads with its punchlines.
Ant-Man and the Wasp — which returns Paul Rudd as the franchise’s size-shifting superhero Scott Lang, Michael Douglas as genius ex-S.H. I. E. L. D. physicist Hank Pym and Evangeline Lilly as daughter Hope Van Dyne/the Wasp — receives a respectable “70” average score on Metacritic.com and a solid 89 per cent “fresh” rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
Praising the sequel’s playfulness, IGN writes that the film “wholeheartedly embraces the inherent ridiculousness of Scott’s powers and the predicaments he often finds himself in — mostly by staging some of the most inventive action scenes attempted in any movie franchise, not just Marvel’s.”
Likewise, Variety lauds the movie’s “pleasingly breakneck, now-you-see-itnow-you-don’t surreal glee” and calls it “a cunningly swift and delightful comedy of scale” — buoyed by the fact that nothing “cosmic” (like, say, the mission of a murderous Thanos) is at stake.
Variety also has hosannas for returning director Peyton Reed, who this time around has “learnt how to operate the heavy machinery of a Marvel superhero movie yet keep it all light and fast and dizzying.”
The Los Angeles Times sees the film’s readily reducible buildings as a tidy emblem of the movie’s neatly compactible sense of scale, compared with the rest of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
“The Disney-Marvel movie cycle and its various subfranchises have always been haunted by dreams of global domination — something craved by emotionally stunted supervillains and .. box-officehungry studio executives. In this biggeris-better context, a movie about a hero who finds his strength in tininess is, well, no small thing,” the Times writes.
As for the fast-patter, often-wry humour, the Hollywood Reporter writes that this sequel is “probably the most amusing film the company has made since the Kevin Feige reign began a decade ago” at Marvel Studios.
Writes the A.V. Club: “While Thor: Ragnarok may be kookier, funnier and more irreverent, Ant-Man and the Wasp is arguably even more of a straightforward comedy, to the point that it doesn’t even have a primary villain... even as the characters keep getting lost in digressive back-and-forths on subjects ranging from truth serums to the value of springing for a deluxe car wash.”
ACTORS RECEIVE PRAISE
Throwing roses at the acting, Rolling Stone writes that “Rudd is a winning combination of sass and sincerity. And it’s a kick to watch Lilly break out and let her star shine. She hasn’t had a part this juicy since she played Kate Austen on Lost.”
Entertainment Weekly, on the other hand, isn’t laughing along, finding the winking humour to be too much meringue on a summertime dessert.
“This is one of those Marvel products peddling self-aware detachment as a defining narrative strategy,” EW writes.
“Scientists will say science stuff — ‘quantum realm,’ ‘quantum entanglement,’ ‘quantum tunnel’ — and then Scott/Ant-Man will deadpan that everyone says ‘quantum’ too much. Characters joke so much about Captain America: Civil War that you start to wonder if you paid movie-ticket prices to read the internet two years ago. It feels less like a feature film than a meme somebody made about an Ant-Man trailer.”