Ant-Man and the Wasp Review

OK, so this is the second of my Marvel film reviews and this one is on the latest Ant-Man movie and sequel to this first un, which is called Ant-Man and the Wasp.

So, is it any good???  Well, let's take a look...

And yep the usual warning is coming up...

SOME PLOT SPOILERS ARE AHEAD BUT NOT TOO MANY!!

So, the story begins with Scott Lang aka Ant-Man (Paul Rudd) who is under house arrest after having been captured by the FBI when he was involved in a skirmish with the Avengers. Despite having only two days left of his sentence under house arrest, Lang has a strange dream involving the wife of Hank Pym (Michael Douglas) leading him to call Hank to tell him about it and not long after he is abducted by Hank and his daughter, Hope (Evangeline Lilly). Hank believes that Lang's dream was an actual message from his wife, Janet (Michelle Pfieffer) who believe is still alive and trapped in the quantum realm, which Lang himself had visited in the first film. So, together they work to try and devise a way to create a tunnel that will lead into the quantum tunnel to rescue Janet.

So, in order to achieve this, they need a special part needed to make the tunnel stable, which is in the hands of a black market dealer, Sonny Burch (Walton Goggins) who double crosses them rather than make a deal when he realises the potential wealth in Hank's research. Hope then dawns her Wasp outfit and fights Burch's men and retrieves the part but before she can leave she is incapacitated by a quantumly unstable woman, Ava Starr aka Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen) who takes the part and also Hank's miniature lab.

Hank reluctantly approaches one of his old colleagues, Bill Foster (Laurence Fishburne) which he had a falling out with, to help him locate the lab but all is not what it seems with Bill and its from here that they must work together to find a way to save Janet from the quantum realm and retrieve the lab...

THOUGHTS

As a sequel, Ant-Man and the Wasp is a very enjoyable film that continues the good humour that we had seen in the first one and the film's light hearted tone certainly is to its credit. The events of the film will also later tie in with the events of another Marvel film, Avengers: Infinity War but I won't say much about that here. However the film itself is ceratinly a laugh and characters are all very engaging and Scott Lang himself is a likeable superhero figure.

PERFORMANCES (No notable scenes as such but I may mention one or two moments from the film that might lean towards spoilers!)

As for the performances, they are all pretty good here.

Starting with Paul Rudd, who is excellent again as Scott Lang aka Ant-Man and he plays the part in a very engaging way and clearly Rudd is having great fun with the part and appears to enjoy delivering the fun dialogue.  We also get to see Rudd do some amusingly nerdy things in the film such as watch Lang under house arrest play his electric drum kit! Later on Lang dawns his Ant-Man suit once again but this time round he ends up using a prototype, which proves to be a little unstable and sees him at one point grow to massive size! So, overall Rudd does a great job again in the role.

Michael Douglas is also great again as Hank Pym, the former SHIELD agent and physicist who is determined to try and find a way to bring back his wife, Janet from the quantum realm. Douglas is also clearly enjoying re-playing the role here and he has plenty of good moments as he has a good rapport with Paul Rudd and Evangeline Lilly throughout the film.

Evangeline Lilly next up also makes a welcome return in her role as Hope, Hank's daughter, who this time around dawns a miniaturising suit and is known as Wasp and basically fights alongside Lang. Lilly also enjoys nice chemistry with Rudd in the film as Lang and Hope both previously were in a relationship, which in between the events of the first and second films, ended badly but they appear to patch things up as the film goes on.

Laurence Fishburne is also as good as he ever is here in the role of Bill Foster, who is an estranged colleague of Hank's and the two of them end up working together although it turns out that Bill is not all what he seems but that's all I will say for now! Overall, Fishburne does an excellent job here and you wouldn't expect any less of him.

Michael Pena reprises his role here also as Luis, Lang's former cellmate and now business partner in his security crew. Pena priceless in the film and he provides alot of comedic moments and I will only mention one where at one point, Luis and his fellow friends are captured by Sonny and his men, who inject him with "truth serum" although the man who does claims it isn't however Luis disagrees and says "This is definitely truth serum!". So as Sonny interrogates him over Lang's whereabouts, Luis rips into a fast-paced and long winded account of how he met Lang in the first place up until their present day! 

Randall Park is also great in his role as the FBI agent, Jimmy Woo, who keeps Lang under surveillance while he is on house arrest and Park has plenty of funny moments and at times he even steals the show.

Hannah John-Kamen also does an excellent job as Ava Starr aka Ghost, a qunatumly unstable woman who is desparate to try and find a way to cure her condition at no matter what the cost is. Hannah provides one of the more serious performances in the film and gives her plight a much needed dramatic weight to the story where things are usually pretty light hearted her story is a sad one.

Walton Goggins is very good also in his role as sleazy black market dealer, Sonny Burch, who tries to double cross Hank and Hope and its good to see him play a more three dimensional low level villain than the straight laced psycho he did in the latest reboot Tomb Raider film.

Abby Ryder Forston nicely reprises her role as Cassie, Lang's daughter who idolises her father and she shares a nice natural chemistry with Paul Rudd as the two of them play off each other nicely onscreen.   

And last of all is Michelle Pfieffer who is fine in her role as Hank's wife, Janet, who had been lost to the quantum realm and feared dead for years.  And it has to be said that after all this time and at the age of 60, Michelle is still looking mighty good for her age!

DIRECTOR AND MUSIC

As for the director, Peyton Reed returns to the directorial helm for the sequel and he does an excellent job here as he keeps the pace of the film moving along very swiftly and is pretty confident at handling the action. Reed also keeps things nice and light hearted for the most part in the film yet never forgets to add in some more dramatic moments to add a bit of weight to the story.

Music wise Christophe Beck provides the score and its pretty good but I have to say at the same time I didn't find incredibly memorable but it served the film well and its tone was very well suited to the film. 

FLAWS

As for flaws...yeah OK there are some in the film but I won't really go into them too much here to avoid spoilers!

However what I will say is that perhaps the film is just a bit too light and fluffy at times in its presentation and there is plenty of humour which is always a good thing but perhaps the film could have benefited from balancing out the humour with the drama. Despite that though its still very enjoyable and engaging stuff but you could perhaps say that light nature does undercut it in some ways.

PLOT SPOILER WARNING HERE!!!

I also found it a bit daft how Hank was able to fool the FBI so convincingly by using a decoy of a giant insect to take Lang's place while Lang is helping Hank and Hope out. I mean surely the insect would have shown upon the FBI's surveillance cameras at some point not unless Hank had used some sort of special camoflague technique to give the impression that Lang is infact still there!

And last of all the film's ending (which I won't mention!) may end up confusing audiences somewhat unless they have seen Avengers: Infinity War because the events of that film tie in with this one however if you aren't totally clued into the whole Marvel cinematic universe you might just end up more baffled by it than anything else!

Anyway that's it for the flaws.

SUM UP 

So to sum up, Ant-Man and the Wasp is a very engaging and enjoyable sequel, which sees the cast all confidently resume their roles and in particular the trio of Paul Rudd, Evangeline Lilly and Michael Douglas all work really well together onscreen. The film is also backed up with some funny clever dialogue and amusing supporting characters as well as solid direction by Peyton Reed and good CGI effects with the miniaturisation to full size change effects all well done.

And it may still have some niggles here and there and just perhaps the overall tone of the film does lean towards being a bit too light at times but its still a very likeable film that ticks most boxes and its a well worth checking out.

Right, so that's it for now and I will be back soon with another review of sorts.

Till the next one yet again its bye for now!