Ant Man and the Wasp

The first "Ant Man" was a bit of an oddity at the time - in its attempt to be the deliberately light palate-cleanser between "Avengers-Age of Ultron" and "Captain America: Civil War", it occasionally felt mildly inconsequential, with a mid-level corporate villain and some overly-shoe-horned-in references to other Marvel movies. The sequel comes right after the biggest-of-the-big Marvel movies with "Infinity War", with the cliffhanger from that one unresolved (and not resolved in this film either). And its villains are still somewhat smaller scale - there's no big plan to conquer the world or the universe going on here.

But for the most part it works - in particular, the returning Paul Rudd feels a lot more comfortable in the combination of superheroing and quipping the job requires (in the first film he seemed a little flattened by the challenge of carrying a leg in a multi-million dollar franchise, this time he's clearly having more fun with the role). The film still finds fun ways to play with scale as the heroes shrink-and-expand both themselves and various objects around them using the "makes-no-sense-as-physics-but-go-with-it-anyway" Pym particle devices, and has a thrilling "everybody chase the McGuffin" finale to go with it. Michael Douglas remains delightfully grouchy as Hank Pym, Evangeline Lilly gets to kick a lot more butt as his returning daughter, now superheroed as the titular Wasp (although Lily constantly seems to get unnecessary romantic subplots - she's a good looking woman but she doesn't need to be hooked up with the leading man/men just because of that - whether "Lost", "The Hobbit" or this, she plays characters who would have been just as fine without the love plot). Michelle Pfeiffer is more or less the major McGuffin in this one  - rescuing her Janet Van Dyne (the original Wasp) is the thread of the movie, but that means she really only shows up for the last fifteen minutes. The villains are more funcitonal than memorable, but they serve to keep things ticking over and the mix of action-and-gags is thoroughly comfortably done.

This isn't looking to reinvent the superhero playbook, but it plays what it has pretty nicely. And it's a damn comforting movie to watch. Rant and rave against that if you wanna, but simple enjoyment has its place and this is definitely in its place.