Rehabilitation isn't a piece of cake: after being released from jail, Scott has problems finding a job. Worse still, his ex-wife refuses to allow him to see their daughter, Cassie, while her new boyfriend is a police officer. Upon breaking in into a top secret vault, Scott finds a strange suit, puts it on, and realizes it has the ability of shrinking him the size of an ant. He is quickly contacted by the suit's inventor, Dr. Pym, who wants Scott to train with his obedient ants. Their goal is to stop Pym's ex-partner, Darren, who wants to perfect the atom shrinking formula and sell it as a weapon to the shady Hydra organization. After a lot of misadventures, Scott manages to destroy Darren's headquarters and shrink Darren into molecular levels. Scott falls in love with Pym's daughter, Hope.
When the director Edgar Wright left the project, doubts were conjured up regarding the future of "Ant-Man". However, with Peyton Reed on board as the new director, the final result is a fun and entertaining superhero film with several moments of comedy, though still "standardized" to fit into the mold of Marvel's Cinematic Universe. It's "Oceans 11" meets "Honey, I Shrunk the Kids", and works surprisingly well—except for two disturbingly dark moments (the murder of Frank by shrinking him into a patch of blood; the lab experiment of trying to shrink a goat) which seem out of place, the whole rest of "Ant-Man" is cheerful, colorful, 'light' and optimistic, rehashing some old stereotypes, but giving them a few twists thanks to the refreshing humor. The sequence alone where Scott uses the suit to shrink the size of an insect for the first time, filmed in a wide lens to underline the sudden gigantic size of a bathtub, is expressionistic, whereas other ideas are also amusing, especially the one that ordinary ants are "recruited" to help, even by holding a cube of sugar for his cup of tea. Michael Douglas stands out the most in the role of Dr. Pym, giving weight to the story due to his charismatic performance. The finale is probably the highlight, conjuring up several ideas which almost turn the movie into a comedy (Scott escapes from his cuffs in a police car by putting his helm on and conveniently "out-shrinking" them; the insect light trap scene; Cassie watching the contrast between the "epic" fight of the shrunk Scott and Darren, but which is actually silly since they just throw some puny toy trains around her room). Despite created on Marvel's assembly line, "Ant-Man" has moments of inspiration and charm.
Grade:++
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