What I’m watching: Ant-man sequel is a near perfect summer movie

Date: 7/12/2018

What I’m watching: “Ant-Man and the Wasp,” now in theaters.

Can I get a little respect for Ant-Man? As a kid growing up in the 1960s when the Marvel Comics revolution was underway, Ant Man was not high on my list of superheroes. (Full disclosure here: I was always a Batman guy.)

Spiderman was cool and Captain America was great. I liked Namor the Submariner because he was a good guy one moment and a bad guy the next.

But Ant-Man? Here was a hero who developed the means through science to shrink and later expand his body as well as to communicate with ants.

Okay.

His girlfriend and later his wife was his partner with the code name The Wasp, who could also shrink to insect size Her suit allowed her to fly and she had weapons that could “sting.”

Frankly she was a little more interesting.

Ant-Man and the Wasp were two of the original Avengers in the comics, just to present the historic record accurately.

I was always amazed the Marvel movie brain trust chose Ant-Man to be a subject of a movie, but the 2015 film starring Paul Rudd was a hoot.

It had a smaller scale – no pun intended – and seemed to me to be the spiritual child of the great B-film studio from the 1930s and ‘40s, Republic Pictures. Republic knew how to pack a lot of entertainment into a “little” film made with professionalism and precision.

“Ant-Man” was just that and the sequel is also fun, exciting and just a tad self- aware of the silliness of it all.

In the second film, Scott Lang/Ant-Man (Paul Rudd) is under house arrest after he participated in the events of the third Captain America “Civil War.”  We last saw him in a prison, but Captain America released him.

Between that scene and this current film, Lang was recaptured and tried with the result being a two-year house arrest.

Hank Pym (Michael Douglas), the developer of the shrinking technology and his daughter Hope (Evangeline Lilly) have been driven underground by Lang’s action.

Two people are determined to get their hands on the technology. The first is Ava Starr (Hannah John-Kamen), a woman who has been in an accident and needs the Pym technology to try to cure her condition. The second is a fence who wants to sell the technology on the black market.

Helping Lang is his ex-prison buddy Luis – Lang is a convicted thief – played by Michael Pena. Luis now operates a security-consulting firm. Pena steals the show several times with expert comic timing.

Rudd’s Ant-Man is the goofiest superhero on the screen. Likable and earnest, Lang is a bit of an idiot at times, although a well-meaning one.  Rudd handles the comedy expertly, but is also very believable as a hero.

Director Peyton Reed returned to the franchise and clearly knows how to present a tone and style that is lighter and more fun than many other Marvel films.

I really liked this film, perhaps even more than the first. It’s a family friendly movie, until the post-credit scene that changes the tone of the film drastically. I understand why the scene was included, but it left a bit of sour taste in my mouth.

Regardless, “Ant-Man and The Wasp” is a solid and enjoyable summer movie.