Movie Review: Ant-Man

For my birthday a couple weeks back Jenn treated me to quite the day. I wrote about that already. So without re-treading old material I will just say check out that post to see the full day recap. However the last stop on my birthday outing was to go see Marvel's latest movie Ant-Man. In all honesty Ant-Man was not on my radar. It didn't even make my most anticipated movies of the summer. But after hearing good things and reading its above average reviews I thought it might be another surprise like Guardians of the Galaxy. 

On the good side I love Paul Rudd. He just plays the down to earth good guy really well. And his chops to try to pull Ant-Man off were commendable. Sadly like the concept of a superhero called Ant-Man even his greatest efforts couldn't make this a compelling movie. My biggest problem was that it tried to be both a superhero action movie and an action comedy. Not that you can't do both but Ant-Man never had a clear identity. So it made moments of humor feel forced and the action moments feel weirdly out of place. The other big positive is that as dumb of an idea as Ant-Man is Peyton Reed (the director) did a great job of at least making Ant-Man's powers remotely interesting. His portrayal and cinematic choices to bring Ant-Man to life were easily the best parts of the movie.

Sadly though Ant-Man was a run of the mill superhero movie. With movies like Guardians of the Galaxy, The Avengers, and Captain America: The Winter Soldier this movie just can't live up to the high bar Marvel has set for itself. Would Ant-Man have been a better rental? Sure. But its still a good fun summer movie that I at least enjoyed my time with. Will I see it again? Probably not.