Let's get small.

Rating: 7/10 (21 July 2015)

I must admit that I never got into comic books, so when I heard Paul Rudd would be Marvel's Ant-Man, I had to read the Ant-Man Wikipedia entry just to make sure it wasn't some total prank. Stupid me, he first appeared in 1962, no doubt capitalizing on those halcyon days when the young males across America were obsessed with ants, quantum theory, and microphilia in general.
I'm not the only one with a bit of disbelief. While I was waiting in line to see Terminator Genisys, a stranger pointed over to the Ant- Man poster and said, "Ant-Man?! Man, they're really scraping the bottom of the barrel for these Marvel movies."
But let's not make a mountain out of an ant hill. The Ant-Man movie is the light-hearted, tongue-in-cheek, self-aware, almost campy movie that I wanted Avengers: Age of Ultron to be. Paul Rudd is the best casting of a Marvel hero since Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark. Michael Douglas brings some class to the whole affair, Evangeline Lilly isn't given a ton to work with but succeeds at being told she's crucial yet largely relegated to behind-the-scenes work, and Michael Peña provides some nice laughs as a goofy and cocksure sidekick.
Once again, the villain is actually science, or at least cutting- edge science. That's because the technology that makes the Ant-Man possible, the Pym particle, could be used for a lot of good, but in the wrong hands, it will surely be used for a lot of bad. And you can tell immediately that Corey Stoll as Darren Cross is bad because he's bald. He pretty monolithically bad, the only reason for which seems to be that Dr. Pym wouldn't raise him as a surrogate father figure.
All of the summer blockbusters now require some throwaway side story about divorce and wanting to be better parents for their kids. I wish all those side stories would go subatomic and be lost forever, allowing for more time to "mount the thorax."
Ant-Man can control ants, too! But he can't until he learns how to clear his mind. So Hope van Dyne tells him to think of his daughter. Simple! Easy peasy, calabrese! He can't fly, though, even though some ants can fly. This all becomes problematic when Yellowjacket shows up and can fly and shoot lasers. Lasers seem lame when Yellowjacket could've had cannons that transform living creatures into small piles of ectoplasmic goop.
As in Terminator Genisys, a total victory for the good guys includes blowing up a server farm. Good thing Darren Cross, just like Skynet, never heard of putting data way up high in The Cloud.
The final battle includes some imagery that almost made me wish I'd seen it in 3D, or at least after enjoying some medicinal tea. It hasn't been this much fun to be small since Rick Moranis shrunk his kids.