"Why don't you just call The Avengers?"

Rating: 7/10 (30 April 2017)

I guess I owe Peyton Reed an apology. I wasn't entirely right in saying Ant-Man was going to be bad. In fact, I had a lot of fun with it. I loved how small-scale the movie was, and Paul Rudd was great here. His arc is predictable, sure, but he does a good job giving the character some personality where the script failed to do so. Rudd is a guy who I love to watch in movies, so seeing him get his "big break" here is personally awesome for me and honestly would have been even if the movie wasn't good.
However, I had some serious issues with the movie. Now, whenever the film really honed in on the "heist" aspect of the story, it worked. But, the MCU references bring the film to a screeching halt. One scene in particular (spoiled by the ads, so I'll talk about it) involves the lead having to steal something for Pym, only to find out the base where this technology is at is actually an Avengers base. This leads to a completely unnecessary and out-of-place fight between Ant-Man and Falcon. Yeah, it was kind of cool, but man, forced doesn't even begin to describe how this scene felt. This is something that definitely wasn't in Edgar Wright's original script.
Speaking of Wright, Peyton Reed does try to mimic Wright every so often, and I wish he hadn't. The montage scene early on with Michael Pena worked, but the fast cuts and other montages similar to what you'd see in Wright's films just don't. You really shouldn't try to imitate other directors, especially one as visually distinct as Wright. Thankfully, Reed doesn't fall back on his style often and has his own voice, even if it is more mainstream.
As a whole, though, Ant-Man is a fun movie that is refreshingly small, but ultimately gets bogged down whenever it tries to tie itself to Marvel's Cinematic Universe. Which is a shame, especially knowing that with Wright at helm, it would have definitely been more of a standalone feature and it probably would have been even better.