Ant-Man and the Wasp - B

​Quick Hit:  Never reaching farther than saccharine, the film somehow manages to maintain likeability without much of a plot besides that of a chessboard. 

Ant-Man, the film started by Edgar Wright and finished by Peyton Reed, was fun, but didn’t really seek to add a whole lot of depth to either the characters or the MCU as a hole. It’s sequel manages to do some of both, but still comes off as feeling like there isn’t much at stake – part of the issue is coming off the huge stakes of something like Infinity War, but another part is just the scope of it – no pun intended, but it’s small.

Scott is now on house arrest after his adventures with Captain America in Civil War, which caused him to violate the Sokovia Accords – which haven’t been mentioned in a bit, but alrighty then. He hasn’t seen Hank or Hope in years, and then wakes up in the tub having a dream that featured Hank’s wife Janet – and so he calls them out of the blue, leading to a pseudoscience filled chase into the quantum realm. Second issues consist of Scott and his merry men attempting to get a business started in security and his continued bonding with his daughter as she seeks to be a part of her father’s new super powered world. Oh ya, and there’s the normal generic Marvel villain or two – but at least Ghost (played by Hannah John-Kamen) has a decent enough reason. She’s in constant pain and all she wants is to get out of it. 

The plus side (size) of the Ant-Man series is that thus far it has been really entertaining. The humor is extreme and it’s a lot of fun to see the combat that can come from being tiny one moment and normal sized the next. It allows a lot of different things to play off of and you also get a chance to see things from a different perspective. Truth Serum makes an appearance here to hilarious effect, and there’s even an addition to the humor, Randall Park as a goofy agent who is Scott’s Friend/Parole Officer. It’s just good, clean fun as the kids would say. And Rudd, for his credit, dances the line between goofy and serious perfectly.
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The downside is that it makes the stakes of everything seem so unsubstantial. Having Janet back in the MCU is going to be a huge thing, and obviously the quantum realm has been set up as something that allows some retcons to occur, but there just doesn’t seem to be any substance to it. There’s even giant nematode looking things in the realm, and I still greeted it with barely a shrug. And Walter Goggins, though at his Gogginsesquemost – is completely wasted as a bumbling arms dealer. While all of the action is going on, no one ever feels like they’re in any real danger. 

But you know what? I liked it anyway. Peyton Reed and his writing team has given us another sweet and charming Ant-Man film, and I’ll watch it again, if only to hear more (Ant)onio puns. I’m giving this one a “B”.

For more on this film, check out IMDB.