Review: Ant-Man And The Wasp - Quantumania

Ant-Man And The Wasp:
Quantumania
Cert: 12A / 124 mins / Dir. Peyton Reed / Trailer

It's a weird one, I don't know what critics want. I mean to be fair, I am technically part of 'critics' and I don't really know what I want, so how would I have any idea what would keep other people happy? Not a clue. Anyway, Marvel Studios' Phase Five begins with another outing for Ant-Man and The Wasp, as Paul Rudd and Evangeline Lilly are joined in their eponymous roles for a full adventure by Michael Douglas and Michelle Pfeiffer as Hank Pym and Janet Van Dyne, along with Kathryn Newton as Ant-Man's daughter Cassie, all shrunk to sub-atomic size and battling their way to be free of The Quantum Realm, much to the chagrin of Jonathan Majors' Kang The Conqueror...

And the critics really aren't bothered about it. The film's been on general release for a week*¹ and the aggregated score over at Rotten Tomatoes is firmly middling. Far from being trashed, but way below what was expected or even hoped-for. Civilian viewers are digging it a bit more, but frankly they're often more fickle than the folks' who write it all down afterwards. There seems to be the received thought that Quantumania (looks good written down, but a dreadful title to say aloud) is a decidedly average outing which is more suited to the hardcore Marvel fanboys. But given that this is the 31st feature film in a steadily-formulaic series, the fifth screen appearance of Ant-Man and his third own, actual movie, it's hard to know who else the audience is expected to be...

TAKEN

Part of the reason that this review has taken over a week to surface is that I thoroughly appreciated this latest flick, and at the same time I completely understand that criticism. It's reassuringly underwhelming, in a way that seems almost unique to the Ant-Man films. The cast are reliably great (Majors is especially fun, bringing the only real sense of gravitas to the entire thing while still treating it like a pantomime), and the screenplay does just about everything its able to, acknowledging that the story is Fantastic Voyage retooled for the MCU. And bearing in mind the rescue of Pfeiffer's Janet Van Dyne in Ant-Man's first sequel set up precisely this, it hardly comes as a surprise.

Inside of the 'normal world' framing device which tries (and only scrapingly succeeds) to recapture the easygoing, low-key charm of 2015's Ant-Man, the pacing of this movie is relentless, and it's frankly draining. After shrinking, the heroes are split into two groups (standard), with their adventures intertwining to tell the story. Unfortunately, despite industrial amounts of backstory and exposition, none of it slows down enough to convince the viewer of why this matters (other than: trying not to die in the Quantum Realm). There's little room for the story to breathe, and the expansive CGI surroundings (admittedly necessary) create a weird claustrophobia as the main body of the film exists without sunlight. The visual debt to modern era Star Wars is - in places - absolutely off the scale, with pretty much every character in the Quantum Realm looking like they've either stepped out of Maz Kanata's watering hole or just gotten off the shuttle from Jakku.

NON-STOP

The real problem is that much like its 2018 predecessor, there's little that's actively bad about Quantumania but it feels like it doesn't really have a proper place to sit; especially as the film takes place in its own micro-universe where outside time doesn't exist. The potential for these events to spill over into the 'real' world is more than hinted at, of course, but this feels like a very expensive project just to establish a recurring villain for Phase Five. That said, they'd better use it as such, because it's even more of a waste of money to cue up multiversal Kang on the big screen and then not exploit the absolute hell out of him.

Rudd is always fun to watch of course, and this is no exception. But even at his comedic height of working with the Judd Apatow crew, Rudd was always an ensemble player; frequently one of the best things about a movie, but not its leading man. He works best when he's got others to bounce off so it seems slightly unfair to expect the guy to carry the weight of an entire movie on his own, and yet he's the only character upon whom the script allows any real focus.

Then Bill Murray shows up for a restaurant scene which is slightly too long to be classed as a cameo, and not really meaningful enough to be anything but. And as much as we all love Bill, the thought soon emerges that much like Jeff Goldblum in Ragnarok, he's been hired to just turn up and play himself, suggesting the Marvel casting department are now running on fumes. The film is entertaining as hell all the time it's on, but doesn't leave the audience with much other than wanting to see how Kang develops.

A MILLION WAYS TO DIE IN THE WEST

So does this have the whoops of No Way Home, the snarls of Multiverse Of Madness or the camaraderie of Love And Thunder? No, it doesn't. Then again, it doesn't have the appalling accent work of Black Widow, the personality-vacuum of Eternals, or the plotline which deliberately excludes legacy characters and then can't find anything interesting to do with the ones still left of Wakanda Forever, either.

All Quantumania is trying to do is bimble along and have a laugh, and if anything that's far more respectable than striving for greatness where it can't exist. From a wider angle, the film contains very on-point messages about responsibility and personal growth (delivered both straight-faced and with wry smiles), but after two hours, at the movie's very crescendo, when all else lies in ruins and ashes, this still somehow comes down to two guys in a room punching each other...

But there I go again, complaining about a film whose side I'm on.

For better or worse, Ant-Man And The Wasp: Quantumania is essentially a very loud, very bright, two hour chase/fight sequence, with a near-constant exposition track and which still makes almost no sense.

Not going to lie, I rather enjoyed that.

*¹ That's right, I watched this ten days ago and the review is just landing now. That finger-on-the-pulse, agile responsiveness is exactly what you lovely people come here for and I love you for it. ^{[ BACK ]}

DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.