After I sawAnt-Man and the Wasp, I tried to remember if I sawAnt-Man and the Wasp.
This is one of those Marvel products peddling self-aware detachment as a defining narrative strategy.
It feels less like a feature film than a meme somebody made about anAnt-Mantrailer.
Credit: Ben Rothstein/©Marvel Studios 2018
Its forgettable, but some things are better forgotten.
But what if Michael Douglas and Michelle Pfeiffer were totally boring in the 1980s?
is the note this movie decides to start on.
Pfeiffer mostly disappears after that.
Janet was tragic backstory inAnt-Man.
Now shes the plot point of the sequel, The Thing To Pursue.
Perhaps in another sequel shell get to be a character.
In present-day San Francisco, Avenger-adjacent Scott is under house arrest because something something Sokovia Accords.
From there,Ant-Man and the Waspalmost feels like an old-fashioned caper.
Walton Goggins plays a gleeful criminal sharpie, and Michael Penas Luis remains a fast-talking delight.
Those two have one big scene together thats as good as anything Marvels ever done.
Notably, that scene involves no Ant-Men and even fewer Wasps.
Rudds a charmer, and Lilly looks happy to finally have something to do.
But the story is too busy, and too removed, to let them have any noticeable chemistry.
The details of their dynamic are vague, almost obtuse.
We know they made out at the end ofAnt-Man.
We were working together, training together, she says, And, you know, other-stuff-ing together.
Pure PG-13 poetry:other stuff-ing.
But Hope and Scott barely seem to be in the same movie.
Theyre two flavors of heroic blandness.
Shes resolute, laser-focused on rescuing her mom.
Hes a snarkbot, perpetually unprepared until he knows exactly what to do to save the day.
The script has five credited screenwriters, including Rudd.
Not a bad instinct.
Poor Hannah-John Kamen looks stranded as the notional super-baddie, the space-phasing Ghost.
Director Peyton Reed is a steady comedy director.
The film has a bland look gray labs, glorby quantum blobs left over fromDoctor Strange.
And the Wasp has a cool set of stingers that fire energy bullet things at people.
That feels like a cheat, somehow.
Just shoot them with the energy bullets.
I know, I know,the comics.
(Make your own joke here about Bay Area real estate.)
The occasional lightness ofAnt-Man and the Waspfeels unique to this sub-franchise.
(Its a quantum entanglement thing.)
And the costumes, yeesh.
The superpowered people wear outfits that look like expensive athleisure.
Which makes sense.Ant-Man and the Waspis working too hard to look unconvincingly relaxed.C+
