Thumps up: Antman

 

Every now and then, I see a movie and have little to say afterwards. I enjoy it, or I don't, but that's it. Kind of counter to Tarantino's idea of what a good movie is (one that makes you want to have a piece of pie and a conversation afterwards discussing the picture), but there you go.

Antman is such a movie.

I enjoyed it. It was fun. Beyond that, I don't have much.

Sometimes, a thumbs up or down will do.

Negatives:

Villain was kinda bland and uninspiring. This is not much of a problem as it's an origins picture,  so the main focus is on the hero and how he acquires, and deals with, his new powers.

Some things in the script didn't make sense (naturally, it's a superhero flick) and character motivation wasn't always proportional to action taken. But none of these problems threw me completely out of the story.

It had a training sequence, which I am allergic to (sick of 'em), but it was funny and thankfully brief.

The plot is a bit meh, but the it moves so fast you don't really mind, and it's a genre picture, so they have to have all those comic book elements you expect. And they use many in a fresh way.

Positives:

Film is two hours long but felt much shorter. I was never bored and never looked at my watch. Not once.

They had great fun with the changing scale of the hero, and the setting for the ending is awesome.

Balance between character, humor, plot and punching was really good. Much better than in Avengers I and II.

The action sequences I could follow. Unlike in Age of Ultron, which had such quick cuts it was like being hit with a whiffle bat plastered with pictures of bad CGI for two hours.

Nice, lighthearted, tongue-in-cheek tone.

Wasn't bloated. See Age of Ultron.

All the actors were good. Even very good.

Cool set pieces, fun foreshadowing.

A minor character doesn't do what you think he's going to do, which was refreshing.

It's funny and clever.

There are wonderful call-outs, and obscure references, to things like Zoolander, SNL, and the history of the Antman character. This sort of thing, which most people will never notice, shows that the people who made the picture actually cared about, and enjoyed working on, the material.

So there you go. A good, or even great, summer time picture.

All in all, one of the best of Marvel Universe pictures (for me).