That's one messed up dog......

Rating: 8/10 (6 August 2015)

Forced out of his own company by former student and protégé Darren Cross, Dr. Hank Pym recruits the talents of Scott Lang, a master thief just released from prison.
With intense training and his engineering skills, Lang becomes Ant-Man, trained by Pym and armed with a suit that allows him to shrink in size, possess superhuman strength and control an army of ants.
The hero must use his new skills to prevent Cross, also known as Yellowjacket, from perfecting the same technology and using it as a weapon for evil......
This is easily the most risky Marvel mainstream movie to date, many could say GOTG, but it had such a bonkers synopsis and narrative that it could only be the success that it was.
I don't know if its because Age Of Ultron was beyond underwhelming for me, but I found Ant-Man to be one of the most refreshing, funniest, and character driven superhero movies that's not a sequel I've seen in a while.
And it's the most family friendly movie Marvel has made to date. Rudd is brilliant as Lang, and the most human of all the phases characters. He has no special powers, and doesn't have the resources like Stark. He just has his intelligence and cunning, and he's the marvel character you can release to the most. Why? Because he's a normal person just trying to be a better man.
But as good as Rudd is, it's Douglas who steals the film, and his scenes with Stoll are the most intense and satisfying moments in the film. Douglas shows us in this film what an intense screen presence he can be, and like Costner in Man Of Steel, it's been a while since he's shone in a movie.
It takes a while for the film to get going, in fact, the first twenty minutes feel really out of place compared to the rest of the film, and Pena really doesn't do any favours for the film, he almost makes the film become spoof like. I'm guessing that Wright didn't have much to do with that characters arc.
But going back to Wright, there is some wonderful, genuinely laugh out loud moments that has the auteurs mark all over it. The training montages are as funny as they are exciting, and there is one part that involves an enlarged garden gnome that had me in fits of laughter for minutes.
The way the humour is handled only makes the action scenes more enjoyable, and Stolls character seem more unhinged than he his, even though he doesn't seem it, he's one of the more formidable marvel villains of recent times.
The film is never going to be as big as Iron Man or Cap, but it ends phase 2 on a high, and it's the most exciting standalone hero movie released since Thor.
So all in all, it's a fun addition to an already wonderful multi-franchise, but it's maybe too family friendly for some, and it goes way over the top bonkers in the final set piece.
But it's all about the bonkers, and it relishes in the bizarre-ness of the narrative.
Well done Marvel.