Movie Review: Ant-Man and the Wasp
via filmfares https://ift.tt/2N673UT At the heart of it, Ant-Man and the Wasp is basically a love story. During the ’80s. Hank Pym’s (Michael Douglas) wife Janet van Dyne (Michelle Pfeiffer) reduced herself to sub-molecular level while trying to stop a Russian nuclear satellite. She’s considered dead but Hank feels she’s lost somewhere in the quantum zone. Scott Lang/Ant-Man’s (Paul Rudd) triumphant return from the quantum zone in the first film prompts Hank into making a stable tunnel which will help them enter the quantum zone safely. Hank and his daughter Hope (Evangeline Lilly) set up the lab but lack an important component. Before they could buy it from a black marketeer, another entity, Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen) snatches it away. The rest of the film is a three-way cat-and-mouse game between Hank, Scott and Hope versus the Ghost and the black market goons.
Apart from being a romance, Ant-Man and the Wasp is also the funniest Marvel film you’ll see. Well, there is Deadpool too, set in the Marvel Universe, which is funny as well but it carries a dark, irreverent humour. The present film doesn’t require you to block the ears of your children. Also, it’s not just the dialogue, which is witty as hell, by the way but the visual gags which will take your breath away and have you rolling down in the aisles at the same time. For example, in one sequence the Ant-Man uses a truck as a skateboard. Another has him reduced to being a dwarf as the gadget controlling the molecular manipulation malfunctions. Then, we even see a giant ant playing drums. What’s not to love?
Comic book fight scenes are tough to recreate for celluloid but director Peyton Reed has done a commendable job here as well. The scenes are imaginatively written and executed -- you see the Wasp literally running on a knife’s edge when it’s thrown at her and the scenes where Ant-Man tag-teams with her to fight Ghost -- who has the ability to phase through objects too will delight you. Clever use is made of Hank Pym’s technology of using disks to shrink and blow up objects. Hot Wheels cars are blown up to regular sizes and vice versa and a whole building is shrunk to the size of a trolley bg and towed away.
Marvellous use of technology brings to life the younger versions of Michelle Pfeiffer and Michael Douglas on screen. It’s strange that the iconic stars never worked together during their heydays. Looking at the ease with which they execute their scenes and the chemistry which they share it’s a pity no one ever thought of casting them together. Another actor we get to see in Lawrence Fishburne who plays Hank’s friend and rival Bill Foster. This trio of veterans brings in lots of gravitas in a film already overflowing with talent. Michael Douglas is shown to be more mellow and shares more of a bond with his daughter. Evangeline Lilly is great as the Wasp, executing the acrobatics with panache and saying her lines with a deadpan humour. And Paul Rudd is part joker, part superhero, wanting to be everything for everyone. He wants to be world’s greatest dad for his daughter, an able partner for Evangeline and the best boss for his former convict friends with whom he has started a security firm. His reactions to his malfunctioning suit are spot on and his desire to earn his freedom from the two-year house arrest mandated by the FBI is real as well.
The film ends in a way which ties it up with the end of Avengers: Infinity War and offers a sobering finale to this otherwise comedic film which keeps you in the laughs throughout.
At the heart of it, Ant-Man and the Wasp is basically a love story. During the ’80s. Hank Pym’s (Michael Douglas) wife Janet van Dyne (Michelle Pfeiffer) reduced herself to sub-molecular level while trying to stop a Russian nuclear satellite. She’s considered dead but Hank feels she’s lost somewhere in the quantum zone. Scott Lang/Ant-Man’s (Paul Rudd) triumphant return from the quantum zone in the first film prompts Hank into making a stable tunnel which will help them enter the quantum zone safely. Hank and his daughter Hope (Evangeline Lilly) set up the lab but lack an important component. Before they could buy it from a black marketeer, another entity, Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen) snatches it away. The rest of the film is a three-way cat-and-mouse game between Hank, Scott and Hope versus the Ghost and the black market goons.Apart from being a romance, Ant-Man and the Wasp is also the funniest Marvel film you’ll see. Well, there is Deadpool too, set in the Marvel Universe, which is funny as well but it carries a dark, irreverent humour. The present film doesn’t require you to block the ears of your children. Also, it’s not just the dialogue, which is witty as hell, by the way but the visual gags which will take your breath away and have you rolling down in the aisles at the same time. For example, in one sequence the Ant-Man uses a truck as a skateboard. Another has him reduced to being a dwarf as the gadget controlling the molecular manipulation malfunctions. Then, we even see a giant ant playing drums. What’s not to love?
Comic book fight scenes are tough to recreate for celluloid but director Peyton Reed has done a commendable job here as well. The scenes are imaginatively written and executed -- you see the Wasp literally running on a knife’s edge when it’s thrown at her and the scenes where Ant-Man tag-teams with her to fight Ghost -- who has the ability to phase through objects too will delight you. Clever use is made of Hank Pym’s technology of using disks to shrink and blow up objects. Hot Wheels cars are blown up to regular sizes and vice versa and a whole building is shrunk to the size of a trolley bg and towed away.
Marvellous use of technology brings to life the younger versions of Michelle Pfeiffer and Michael Douglas on screen. It’s strange that the iconic stars never worked together during their heydays. Looking at the ease with which they execute their scenes and the chemistry which they share it’s a pity no one ever thought of casting them together. Another actor we get to see in Lawrence Fishburne who plays Hank’s friend and rival Bill Foster. This trio of veterans brings in lots of gravitas in a film already overflowing with talent. Michael Douglas is shown to be more mellow and shares more of a bond with his daughter. Evangeline Lilly is great as the Wasp, executing the acrobatics with panache and saying her lines with a deadpan humour. And Paul Rudd is part joker, part superhero, wanting to be everything for everyone. He wants to be world’s greatest dad for his daughter, an able partner for Evangeline and the best boss for his former convict friends with whom he has started a security firm. His reactions to his malfunctioning suit are spot on and his desire to earn his freedom from the two-year house arrest mandated by the FBI is real as well.
The film ends in a way which ties it up with the end of Avengers: Infinity War and offers a sobering finale to this otherwise comedic film which keeps you in the laughs throughout.
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