ant man

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0478970

ant man is not that good.  this is the most farcical of the marvel movies, and i think it was a good choice to play it that way because paul rudd is allergic to playing completely serious roles.  still, a lot of the jokes fell flat, and i hope they do not let him ruin the rest of the marvel movies that ant man ends up in.  the other part that fell flat was that the bad guy was just sooooooo unconvincing as a bad guy.  i last saw corey stoll as the alcoholic senator in house of cards, where he was very convincing playing an ineffective person.  imdb says he was in five other films i have seen, none of which i remember him being in.  so that tells you something about how memorable his parts are.  i have already started forgetting what he did in ant man.  did he play a senator?  something like that.

i am now going to complain about something.  i know, you cannot believe it and you need to sit down for a minute, right?  paul rudd learned how to be ant man in like three days.  why oh why.  they did his training as a montage anyway, why not just say it was three months?  it still would have been pretty unbelievable, but at least it is believable that he would have been able to learn how to throw a decent punch, deal with rapid miniaturization/enlargement, and make some progress on communing with ants.  yellowjacket did not get to do any training at all!  how did he put up such a big fight?

just in case you feel compelled to watch this movie because you are concerned about missing some background for other marvel movies, here is what you need to know: paul rudd is ant man. michael douglas used to be ant man. evangeline lilly is going to be wasp (aka flying ant man.) hydra got a sample of the pim particle.  falcon fought ant man and wants to bring him into the avengers. stan lee cameoed as a bartender in this one.  many ants died to bring you this information.

ant man gets two miniature tanks.  hey, wait, i thought miniaturized things were supposed to retain their mass?