Small Talk About Marvel's Big Hearted Change of Pace

Rating: 8/10 (23 August 2015)

Marvel comic books were hardly monolithic. Each title had a mood of its own, and dozens of asides, discursives, and idioms sprouted from one serialized issue to the next. The Marvel Cinematic Universe movies, good as they are, struggle to convey this 'stubble' due to their two-hours-every-two years format.
Ant Man delivers some tasty stubble, and solid stand-alone superhero origin storytelling, even if it is, inescapably, a much 'smaller' project than an Avengers: Age of Ultron.
Paul Rudd acts brilliantly, his natural, likable yet magnetic everyman posture is in full effect. Rudd's character, a good hearted but unlucky burglar, fresh out of San Quentin, is armed with three ex-con buddies, and they are funny, fresh, and a welcome change in style from the lycra dolts marking time next to Nick Fury in the recent Marvel installments.
Michael Douglas plays Hank Pym, a scientist and (retiring) hero to rival Tony Stark and his father. Pym "discovers" Rudd's cockeyed optimist protagonist, "Scott." Pym's rival, played by the ascendant Corey Stoll, is Darren Cross, an inventor-mogul wanting to dip toes into the international bad guy business.
Rudd, Douglas, and Stoll make all the dramatic stops, and the production team has fun tweaking the noses of Avengers fans with a naughty 'Capital A' action sequence depicting Scott figuring out the new moves he can make while suited up.
Because this is the 'small' film in Marvel's current phase, the film gets into the whimsical worlds of children and animals, and while these moments are also well executed and story-appropriate, the overall effect is to make the film a bit more cuddly, a la Toy Story, than dyed in the wool Marvel maniacs might prefer.
Rudd is on perfect form here, and Ant Man is a high quality if offbeat super hero flick.