Ant Man (2015)

** ½ out of ****

When I first saw previews for “Ant Man” my first thought was that Paul Rudd was totally the wrong man for a super-hero movie. Turns out that there could have been worse choices made to play the hero, as Rudd does a serviceable job, but come on Marvel are you going to make a movie out of every single character you have?

Twenty-five years ago, Dr. Hank Pym (Michael Douglas) has developed a new technology for reducing the space between atoms in normal materials – effectively a way to cause things to shrink. This short sequence early in the movie was my favorite part about it, as a CGI-ed Michael Douglas is looking more like the guy from “Romancing the Stone” than the creepy “he looks just like his dad” oddball from “Last Vegas”. Pym hides the tech as he believes it is too dangerous to use. His second-in-command (Corey Stoll) can see it would be worth billions to the military and he immediately starts to try to reproduce it from scratch.

Fast forward to modern day and the new version of the technology is almost ready to go. Pym realizes that he needs to use his version of the shrinking tech to prevent the new one from being used. He hires recently paroled master thief Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) to break into Pym's own house to see if he can do it successfully, but it's just a test to see how good Lang is. Lang desperately needs money to be able to see his daughter, so he goes along with the heist, not know what he's getting himself into. But soon Lang is the new “Ant Man” and he, Pym and Pym;s daughter (Evangeline Lilly) are a team trying to prevent the armageddon which would occur if the new version of the technology is militarized.

Whew – long winded explanation.... like all Marvel films this one has lots of intrigue, lots of action, lots of CGI and visual eye candy, but comes up pretty short on heart. The actors are all fine, the story isn't terrible, it has a couple of laughs, but it just doesn't do anything to really grab your attention. A good movie is supposed to make you care about the plight of the antagonists, and as with just about all the recent Marvel films it simply doesn't do that.

A few days after watching this movie I re-watched “Blue Ruin” (2014). “Ant Man” cost $130 million to make, “Blue Ruin” cost $420,000, has no special effects and so little dialogue the script was probably a third as long as “Ant Man”. But “Blue Ruin” is riveting, you lose yourself in the plot and you desperately hope for the hero to win against the bad guys. “Ant Man” is missing that element that connects you to the characters in a way that makes you care about them.

It doesn't stink, but it isn't any great shakes either. It will pass the time, then you'll forget all about it.