Paul Rudd saves otherwise perfectly average B-movie

Rating: 5/10 (25 December 2016)

I'll grant it from the start that Ant-Man is not my first choice for a superhero movie. Apart from Aquaman and The Wall, it was the stupidest thing one could think for a superhero.
As it stands, I watched the movie mostly because my wife is a fan of Paul. So far every other movie he has starred in has been my cup of tea. Unfortunately this one is not.
I'll give the movie a few credits. It had some humor effects that caused my to actually laugh out loud (instead of merely stating lol aloud) and some of the special effects used in the movie were decent enough. It also gave tidbits of information about ants.
Unfortunately the storyline was awkward. Granted, the original concept wasn't much better either so I'd guess the screenwriters had to do with the concept of ... sigh ... Ant-Man to begin with. The shrinking / growing up suit mumbo-jumbo is ridiculous from the start, but I expected it and was able to get past that.
It was just that the plot had enough holes in it that were fit for a truck to drive through. I actually laughed most when the sidekick character was worried about the well-being of a security guard he had knocked out earlier and dragged him off the building before it explodes, but paid no attention to the two guys he just knocked out.
Of course, a few days is always enough time to teach a man to fight martial arts well enough to beat dozens of people. I attended Karate for two years and probably could not hurt a fly with my moves.
The villain was a stereotypical bad guy with less depth than the world's shortest book (Swedish military victories since 18th century). Much like any of the bad guys in the very bad Steven Seagal / Chuck Norris / Van Damme movies I've watched in my youth (forgive me, I did not know better). In addition, in this movie he is stupid enough to aim for the super suit that will change everything when he already has a gun that can instantly remove any person from the face of the earth, leaving hardly any evidence of his/her existence behind. No, none of the powers in the world would pay any money for such weapon. Sigh. Supersuit has to have lasers that copy the sound world of imperial troopers.
The idea of shrinking has been dealt in movies such as Innerspace or Honey, I Shrunk the Kids back in the 80s and truth be told, while the effects are slightly better these days, the story of a good movie requires more than a guy who can instantly change his size and use his fists to beat people up.
Truth be told, superhero movies follow the same pattern. It would be more interesting to watch a movie about guys who have to clean up after the superheroes and villains have fought. They have to pick up the pieces, clean the neighborhood and rebuild everything. Only to start from scratch the next time the good/bad guys decide to have a go at each other.
That said. Paul Rudd plays his character decent enough where Michael Douglas and the rest of the cast show up just to collect their paychecks and fail to deliver anything resembling any sort of realistic emotion or character behavior. If you like the guy, you might check this movie out. If not, there's better things to do for the next 2 hours of your life.