Back in my day . . . bad guys were bad and that was good.
Directed by: Peyton Reed
Written by: Five wieners
Cast: Paul Rudd, Evangeline Lilly, Michael Douglas, Hannah John-Kamen
By the way, I am switching up my format, and I will no longer avoid spoilers in my reviews. Granted, there is nothing to spoil with this lackluster film, but I didn’t want any crybabies to whine about how I ruined their childhoods or some shit.
Ant-Man and The Wasp was basically forty minutes of people driving in cars to get to places I didn’t care about to fight villains that were so lame it left me wanting the Fratellis to pop up to add some real suspense. And most of the shots of Evangeline Lilly were from the waist up when she wasn’t allegedly in her tight little Wasp outfit. This movie had the maturity of Pippi Freakin’ Longstocking but with a weaker story.
And can we talk about how freakin’ absolutely ridiculous Bobby Cannavale looked mugging for the cameras as Scott Lang’s bestest new buddy? This is a guy who once walked into a hotel naked and blasted four guys dead before his nuts dropped in HBO’s Boardwalk Empire
The first Ant-Man was fun and basically a heist movie. Ant-Man and The Wasp was basically a chase movie where the McGuffin was a shrinkable lab the size of my son’s Lego box. And whenever the building shrinks, it grows or sheds wheels on the bottom whenever it needs it. And the thing changes hands more than a cash filled envelope in Congress minus the entertaining payoff.
There is a guy who missed his calling as an Umpa Lumpa who does a truth serum gag for so long that I was half expecting Bennie Hill to crawl out of his grave and chase around a hot girl in slinky lingerie. At least that would have been remotely funny and not as predictable. Also, as much as I like Michael Pena, his character has ceased being amusing in any way. I am over it.
So about the film. Scott Lang (Rudd) is under house arrest for his little stunt supporting the nastiest super villain alive . . . you know, Captain America. Since he is holed up for two years, he comes up with creative ways to be a fun part-time dad to his daughter Cassie (Abby Ryder Fortson). I have to give Scott credit, Pee Wee Herman would be proud of his playhouse efforts. And luckily for Scott, the FBI placed their most incompetent agent on the planet on the job. These days you don’t have to look too far to find a bumbling stooge of an FBI agent.
And since this is a Disney film, they went to their casting office and pulled out Fresh Off the Boat’s lead putz, Randall Park as agent who cares what his name is really.
This FBI agent is so inept, when he thinks Scott has broken his house arrest, just three days shy of his release, he heads to where Scott has last been seen but doesn’t send one pencil pushing geek to Scott’s playhouse to confirm. Bang up job!
Anyway, the Pyms force Scott to work for them to find Wasp I (Michellle Pfeiffer) who is stuck in the sub-atomic realm. The Pyms also use ants as slave labor to mimic Scott’s behavior to throw off the ever so vigilant FBI agents and his ex-wife’s new husband who is also a cop. As I mentioned above, they are super best friends now and even pee together probably. Oh, and the ants are also mocked for not understanding how gyros work or some shit. Hilarious!
Ghost (Kamen) is some phasing freak whose dad was a scumbag or something and she wants to return to the land of the physical. She’s stuck in between realms. And here is where the movie totally pisses me off. Rather than work with her mentor and Pym, she and her mentor work against the Pyms. But don’t worry, after they chase around the mini-lab, Wasp I is rescued from the sub-atomic realm and she now has E.T. powers and can make everyone all better with her fingers. I will resist the urge to make a tasteless handjob joke here.
And just to make the film even more ridiculous, they are able to harness the gateway to the sub-atomic realm into a bitchin’ van where Scott gets to explore for a bit.
That’s it, for a movie I was really looking forward to seeing, Ant-Man and The Wasp was a dud. But, you’ll go out and see it because you don’t believe me.
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