Ant-Man

Just when I was starting to get Superhero movie fatigue, and especially Marvel Superhero movie fatigue, along comes Ant-Man to break up the monotony and give us something we haven't quite seen before, the Marvel heist movie. 

Scott Lang (played by Paul Rudd) is a reformed criminal just being released from prison. Without any other options, he crashes with a fellow criminal and friend Luis (played by Michael Pena), who is working on a robbery job and tries to recruit Scott to join their crew. Scott reminds him that he just got out of prison and does not really desire to go back.  He remains confident he can find a legitimate job since he has mechanical engineering skills, only to wind up working at Baskin Robbins, dealing with idiot customers than cannot grasp the fact that it is an Ice Cream shop. His boss finds out pretty quickly about Scott's past and regretfully has to fire him. Out of options and needing money to try and get his life back on track so he can try and gain visitation rights to see his daughter, Cassie (played by Abby Ryder Fortson), reluctantly joins Luis' crew. Cassie is currently in the custody of her mother, Maggie (played by Judy Greer) and stepfather Paxton (played by Bobby Cannavale), and understandably don't want her felon father anywhere near.

Turns out the robbery job is at a house in San Francisco that Luis was tipped off to that has a huge vault in the basement. Luis recounts how he got this information in a hilariously elaborate monologue that is one of the highlights of the film. Scott is able to break into the house easily and manages to break into the safe only to find a red bodysuit, helmet and not much else. Figuring it's valuable, he takes it with him and leaves. The next day, he decides to try on the suit and helmet to try and figure out what it does. When he hits a button on one of the gloves, he finds himself instantly shrunk to the size of an insect. Frightened by what he's discovered, he follows the directions from a voice he hears in the helmet and returns to the house he stole it from. Turns out the suit was invented by the owner of the house, inventor and scientist Hank Pym (played by Michael Douglas) and the entire burglary was set up by Pym to try to recruit Scott. Hank's protege and successor in running his company, Darren Cross (played by Corey Stoll), has discovered Hank's research with the Ant-Man formula and is looking to replicate it and sell it as a weapon to the highest bidder. Hank, along with his daughter Hope (played by Evangeline Lilly), needs Scott to help him recover Cross's work and destroy all the records of his research so the Ant-Man technology doesn't fall into the wrong hands. 

Ant-Man does a great job breathing new life into into the Marvel Cinematic universe, which at this point was starting to run out of steam after The Avengers: Age of Ultron. Originally meant to be directed by Edgar Wright, he eventually left the project over creative differences with Peyton Reed taking over directorial duties. Still, the script Wright wrote with Joe Cornish remained largely in use, with additional re-writes by Adam McKay and Reed himself. The result was what has to be the funniest entry into the Marvel series. Paul Rudd in the title role brings with it his usual humorous idiosyncrasies that is a welcome change of pace for this type of film. Michael Douglas brings a nice twist to the older mentor role as someone who has made mistakes in his past and made choices that right or wrong has to live with. It's a nice performance and to see someone like him in a Marvel movie. I have to give special credit to Michael Pena as Luis though who just takes his character and runs with it, stealing every scene he is in with ease. Everything he did was priceless and just cracked me up to no end. In lesser hands, his character would have been extremely annoying, but Pena makes him quite endearing instead. Judy Greer once again shows up in a role rather similar to her role in Jurassic World. It's always nice to see her in movies, but sometimes I wish she was given more to do than just react to the madness and anarchy erupting around her. 

Overall, Ant-Man was a fun and inventive superhero film that used it's hero's ability to change size to it's maximum advantage ( for example, a good portion of the climax takes place on Cassie's train set). It reels in the overblown extravagance that has plagued some of the other Marvel films for better or worse and focuses instead on it's characters. I'd say it's easily the best Marvel movie of the summer, and one of their best ever.