Review: Ant-Man and the Wasp is irreverent, full of action, and altogether a lot of fun

By Shreehari H

Father, daughter and suitor find themselves in a rather precarious conundrum—hands tied to the back of a chair, they face a deranged antagonist. This smooth-talking menace goes by the name of Ava Starr, a stealth operative who was once weaponised by S.H.I.E.L.D., and who suffers from a condition that she refers to as molecular disequilibrium. “Every cell in my body is torn apart,” she offers by way of exposition, “and stitched together over and over every day.” We then hear tales of murdered parents and discredited foster dads, even as threats are hurled out, one vendetta-laced proclamation after another, and the air is ripe with iciness.

The cackling of this villain, however, is soon replaced by the quacking of a duck. The superhero’s daughter, Cassie (played by a wonderfully spontaneous Abby Ryder Fortson), is perturbed for some reason, and she has just called her dad, who she refers to as the “world’s greatest grandma,” to seek his help. A ridiculously funny ringtone acts as the harbinger of this call to arms, and a bewildered Ant-Man (played with everyman charm by Paul Rudd) proceeds to inquire of her as to whether anything is amiss.

Pat comes the explanation—the girl can’t find her soccer shoes.

This trademark irreverence is a quality that has always set the Marvel Cinematic Universe apart from broodier, edgier claimants to the superhero throne (Batman v Superman, cough cough) and director Peyton Reed mines the wonderfully written script (one that had four contributors working on it, including Rudd himself) for plenty of laughs.

The film begins with a voiceover by the venerable genius Hank Pym (Michael Douglas in a graceful, quietly dignified turn) who is recounting to his daughter Hope van Dyne (played by Evangeline Lilly in a no holds barred performance) a fateful night when both their lives were altered irrevocably for the worse. Pym and his wife had gone then on a “business trip” of sorts—a mission to disarm a rogue missile, and one that necessitated the entry of either inside the thick plating of the projectile. The former’s regulator is damaged, and his partner in crime offers to relegate herself to a subatomic existence. “If you go that small there’s no coming back,” he warns her, but to little effect. His wife’s mind is already made up. Thirty years down the line, Hank has successfully managed to build a tunnel to the quantum realm, working as he does in a laboratory where ants pass off as workers, a “portable shrunken laboratory filled with all kinds of juicy tech”. He hopes against hope that his family will be reunited once again, and it is this pursuit of a lost love that serves as the emotional anchor of the film.

The actors are consistently top class, and they visibly have a blast performing with material as breezy, as whacked out as this. To wit, there’s a wasp christened as ‘Ulysses S Gr-Ant’ in a delightfully subversive take on the 18th President of the United States, and another named ‘Ant-onio Banderas’ in an allusion to famous actor. There is talk of quantum phasing and quantum spectrometers and quantum entanglement and quantum voids, and in one of the best dialogues in the film, this prompts our utterly nonplussed superhero to ask: “Do you guys just put the word quantum in front of everything?”

The action sequences are deftly executed as well, and one particular sequence in which van Dyne takes on a bunch of black marketeers all by herself is an absolute standout.

Ant-Man and the Wasp might feel just a little familiar in the wake of the original film made in 2015, but it succeeds because of how well it marries some excellently executed special effects with heart. In a superhero universe peopled with larger-than-life characters, it feels like a breath of fresh air, riding as it does on the back of an alter-ego whose puniness remains his biggest strength. It does remind me of what a certain perfumed, powdered eunuch once told his pint-sized Westerosi companion when deliberating on how power often feels like a mummer’s trick, and how its very nature is one that’s open to interpretation—a very small man can cast a very large shadow.

Shreehari H is a lover of films and an even greater lover of writing.