They don’t appreciate my pun.
Who cares about Thanos? What’s an intifininininity stone? Why is Gamora? None of this matters in this movie and it makes the movie effing great. Legit.
You need an absolute zero sum of Marvel knowledge walking into this movie. Outside of a few “Captain America” name drops this movie exists on it’s own to the point this could be the first entry to Ant-Man and not the first Ant-Man film.
I love Infinity War as a movie. Its #actuallygood and it’s also nuts because I never thought I’d ever see something like that happen when I was a little Adam Junior playing Spiderman at the playground. But having side stories that aren’t part of the Thanos saga keeps this franchise fresh and enjoyable and worth seeing between tentpoles.
I wasn’t too hyped coming into this movie and didn’t even intend to see it until about an hour before I did. It was raining out and it felt like my only choice on Netflix was The Last Jedi and I noped out of that.
I liked the first Ant-Man movie just fine. It was good. It was basically the first Marvel movie to not be a big epic and you can probably credit it, and Guardians Vol 1, as the point where Marvel opened up to adapting other genres into their hero films and giving more agency to the director’s own vision.
The first film tried to be a heist movie and generally came close but for the goofy action ending. This film isn’t too far off being a “pure” heist movie featuring a shrinking-growing hero and a shrinking-flying hero and a ghost lady plus science talk with old science peeps. The action scenes aren’t so much fight scenes as they are chase scenes or not-get-caught scenes with action sprinkles and explosion icing.
The cast is great. The big names all have great chemistry and truly own some scenes. The little girl child isn’t annoying and is legitimately charming. Michael Pena rules. TI is TI. The fake Russian guy character acts the crap off being a character actor. Asian Jim (Randall Park) is a lot of fun as the FBI agent. The evil gangsters really make their screen time work. Ghost Out Of Her Shell does her part.
I basically watched the whole movie with a smile on my face. I was laughing out loud frequently. They make great use of pacing and tone to keep things fun. There is a lot more made of the fun you can have with shrinking and bigging for gags and creative action. Its refreshing to see things in a super hero movie that involve more guile and cunning than just punch punch super kick.
If we’re being entirely honest, I probably put this movie at or even above Black Panther in terms of Fun Watchingness. It doesn’t have any of the cultural weight or anything meta that Black Panther brought, but if I’m just looking to watch something for 2 hours and these are both on Netflix its a real coin toss.
Even if you’re like my vegan friend who hates everything fun if it involves a super hero because of the inherent dumbness, give this a try since its more along the lines of a Honey I Shrunk The Kids than The Dark Knight.
Stay for for the mid credits scene. The post credits is whatever because I don’t even remember it.
Ranking rating: Double Thumbs Up Recommend. Go see. It isn’t critical to the Marvel Universe, but it doesn’t have to be and that’s why its so good. And as with any comedy, see it in a theatre with peeps.
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