- UK release: July 2015
- Director: Peyton Reed · Writers: Edgar Wright, Joe Cornish, Adam McKay, Paul Rudd
- Studio / distributor: Marvel Studios; Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures
- Genre: Superhero heist comedy / science-fiction adventure · Runtime: 117 minutes (BBFC 12A)
- Main cast: Paul Rudd (Anchorman, Knocked Up) as Scott Lang; Evangeline Lilly (Lost, The Hobbit) as Hope van Dyne; Michael Douglas (Wall Street, Basic Instinct) as Hank Pym; Corey Stoll (Midnight in Paris, House of Cards) as Darren Cross
- Rotten Tomatoes: 83% critics / 86% audience · My rating: 8.5 / 10
Ant-Man arrives with a backstory more dramatic than anything in the film itself. Edgar Wright spent the better part of a decade developing it, then walked away over creative differences weeks before shooting, leaving Marvel to hand the keys to Peyton Reed and reassemble the script on the fly. Every sign pointed to a mess. What actually opens in cinemas is the loosest, most relaxed thing the studio has made, a film that has the confidence to close out a phase of universe-building with a story about a man stealing a suit, and to treat that as a feature rather than a comedown.
The setup
Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) is a cat burglar with a master’s in electrical engineering and a daughter he is not allowed to see, freshly out of prison and finding that an honest job is harder to keep than a safe is to crack. Hank Pym (Michael Douglas), a retired scientist sitting on a technology he has spent his life hiding from the world, picks Scott for exactly the skills that put him inside: the ability to shrink to the size of an insect while keeping the force of a full-grown man, and the nerve to use it. Pym’s old protege Darren Cross (Corey Stoll) is close to weaponising the same science, which means the job is a heist with a deadline. Scott has to learn to control the suit, win round Pym’s wary daughter Hope (Evangeline Lilly), and break into a building he has every reason to leave alone. It is redemption dressed as a robbery, and it knows it.
The cast
Rudd is the reason the whole thing holds together. He brings the easy, slightly bruised charm he has spent a comedy career refining, and he plays Scott as a decent man who happens to be good at a bad thing rather than a quipping action figure. Douglas is the surprise, lending Pym a real weight of regret and old-guard authority that the science-fiction nonsense badly needs to feel earned; he sells the impossible with a straight face. Lilly is given the thankless job of standing slightly outside the fun and mostly makes it land, her impatience with the men around her well placed. Stoll’s Cross is the usual Marvel problem, a villain who is a dark mirror of the hero and not much else, though Stoll gives him a genuine streak of wounded ego. The film is quietly stolen by Michael Pena as Scott’s motormouth former cellmate, whose rambling, side-tracking storytelling is funnier than anything in the script proper.
The craft
What Reed and the writers understand is that a man who shrinks is a gift to visual comedy, and they spend it well. The set pieces play with scale in ways the bigger Marvel films never bother to: a fight that to the human eye is two men barely moving, a climax staged across the geography of a child’s bedroom with toy trains and consumer electronics turned into towering hazards. Christophe Beck’s score keeps things light and quick on its feet, and Russell Carpenter’s photography sells the smallness without ever losing you. The shrinking effect itself is convincing, the macro photography genuinely lovely, and there is real wit in how the film treats the ant colony as workmates rather than spectacle. At 117 minutes it is among the leanest things the studio has released, and it moves.
How it stacks up
The obvious comparison is Iron Man, the other Marvel film built on a workshop, a flawed man and a suit he has to learn to fly, and Ant-Man is the smaller, funnier cousin of that origin story. The closer relative is last year’s Guardians of the Galaxy, which proved the studio could let a film be silly and charming and still belong to the universe. But the bones here are older than either. This is a heist picture, closer to Ocean’s Eleven or a caper from the 1960s than to a standard superhero outing, with the crew, the plan, the gadget and the run-through that never survives contact with the job. Reed reaches back to the genre, and the comedy lands better for it.
Critics versus the rest of us
Critics are warm, sitting around 83%, with audiences a little higher at 86%, and the consensus is that a behind-the-scenes near-disaster turned into one of the more likeable entries on the slate. The recurring complaint is the familiar one, that the villain is thin and the third act collapses into the usual climactic punch-up. Both are fair. I would push back only on the suggestion that the small stakes are a weakness. After a run of films where the threat is a city, a country or the planet, a story whose climax fits on a windowsill is a relief, and the modesty is the appeal rather than a failing.
Verdict
This is a film I came out of grinning and would happily put on again, which counts for a great deal with me. It is funny without straining, it uses its premise inventively instead of treating it as a punchline, and it has the good sense to be a heist comedy first and a universe-building exercise second. The villain is forgettable and the plot mechanics creak in the final stretch, but the cast, the wit and the sheer rewatchability carry it past those flaws with room to spare. The smallest hero on the roster has made one of the most purely enjoyable films of the year. 8.5⁄10.
Availability: On general release in UK cinemas now, in 2D and 3D. A DVD and Blu-ray release will follow later in the year.
Update
Added since this review first appeared: Scott Lang turned out to be no one-off. He returned to fight alongside the larger roster in Captain America: Civil War (2016) before a direct sequel, Ant-Man and the Wasp (2018), promoted Hope van Dyne to co-lead and gave the partnership the billing the first film only hinted at. The original has settled into its reputation as one of Marvel’s most rewatchable smaller pictures, the palate-cleanser between the heavier ensemble films. It now streams on Disney+ and is widely available on disc and digital.
BBFC content advice
Rated 12A by the BBFC for moderate action violence, moderate bad language. The notes below may contain spoilers.
Violence: Scenes of moderate action violence include kicks, punches, and occasional gunfights, while the antagonist utilises a suit that fires lasers. Sight of blood is infrequent and discreet, and much of the violence contains comic elements. There is also a scene in which a futuristic device is used to turn a man, and later a lamb, into a tiny puddle of goo, although the transformation is rapid and contains no gory detail.
Language: There is infrequent use of moderate bad language (‘pussy’) and occasional mild bad language, including ‘shit’, ‘ass’, ‘son of a bitch’, and ‘screwed’. A character refers to Ant-Man’s ability to shrink as ‘the work of gypsies’, although the language is not intended to be derogatory.
Additional issues: There are infrequent mild sex references, including a passing reference to the first pair of breasts a man touched.
Source: British Board of Film Classification (bbfc.co.uk).
