Director: Peyton Reed; Screenwriters: Edgar Wright, Joe Cornish, Adam McKay, Paul Rudd; Starring: Paul Rudd, Evangeline Lilly, Michael Douglas, Corey Stoll, Michael PeÃ±a; Running time: 117 mins; Certificate: 12A

Paul Rudd experiences significant shrinkage as Marvel's latest hero Ant-Man, but fortunately not that kind that plagued Seinfeld's George Costanza. He plays Scott Lang, a cat burglar fresh out of prison who stumbles upon a suit that miniaturises him to insect-sized form.

All this is no accident. Reclusive tech genius Hank Pym (Michael Douglas) and his daughter Hope van Dyne (Evangeline Lilly) need him to pull off a daring heist and prevent a deadly militarised version of the Ant-Man suit (dubbed the Yellowjacket) from wreaking havoc. Scott, estranged from his young daughter Cassie, sees this as a chance for redemption and shrinks down to become Marvel's tiniest hero.

Zade Rosenthal

Ant-Man is the smallest MCU outing to date both in terms of its scope and storyline. Director Peyton Reed plays it out as a lively heist romp that avoids the standard issue giant-object-crashes-into-a-city blockbuster finale. This is, in truth, a much better movie than its direct predecessor Avengers: Age of Ultron; tighter, narratively cleaner and more sure of itself tonally. With Rudd and Adam McKay on scripting duties (taking over from Edgar Wright and Joe Cornish), Ant-Man puts comedy first, juggling flippant one-liners with Incredible Shrinking Man-style sci-fi visuals.

The film works best when it finds ways to thread humour into the action set pieces. Michael PeÃ±a's motor-mouthed con artist Luis is a particular highlight, talking Scott through a tip-off as Reed zips from scene to scene in snappy, fluid montages. The stand-out sequence takes place in a child's bedroom, intercutting between a furious micro battle across a railroad and macro shots of a toy Thomas the Tank Engine casually choo-chooing along train tracks.

Keeping it all together is Rudd, whose scrappy underdog Scott is a markedly different character from the more chiselled heroes who populate the Avengers. Though initially he may have seemed an unlikely choice to lead a comic book movie, Rudd is as revelatory here as Robert Downey Jr was when he first suited up as Iron Man or Chris Pratt as the dance-loving Star-Lord in Guardians of the Galaxy. You can't imagine anyone else in this role.

Free of the bloated running time we've come to expect from summer movies, it's a hugely entertaining superhero comedy that's a refreshing break from Marvel formula.

Where Ant-Man falters is in the awkward beats that try and integrate it into the wider MCU. The much-publicised appearance of an Avenger feels awkwardly shoe-horned in as an act of franchise building, while flashbacks to the '80s leave us underserved when it comes to the original Wasp Janet van Dyne and what caused the relationship break between Hank and his scorned protÃ©gÃ© Darren Cross.

Zade Rosenthal



House of Cards actor Corey Stoll comes with the requisite sneer and shadiness, but he's not given much to work with and convincing character motivations end up a little foggy. Chalk him up as another Marvel villain who can't quite live up to Loki.

For a film forged under difficult circumstances (Edgar Wright developed the movie for nearly a decade before leaving the director's chair just before filming), Ant-Man emerges fairly unscathed. Free of the bloated running time we've come to expect from summer movies, it's a hugely entertaining superhero comedy that's a refreshing break from Marvel formula.

4

This content is created and maintained by a third party, and imported onto this page to help users provide their email addresses. You may be able to find more information about this and similar content at piano.io