Ant-Man and the Wasp

I love the band Radiohead! I mean, they have slowly drifted off into the land of dad rock these days but I really couldn’t care less as they still do hold a special place in my heart. To this day I still stalk every set list of every show they play and I also rush to the theater to see any film that Johnny Greenwood (guitarist) has scored, even if that means sitting through a three hour epic about a young British boy and his pet pig’s journey to freedom after his abusive uncle threatens to bang said pig on camera to save the princess’s life. I somehow combined The Butcher’s Boy with Black Mirror for that odd reference but you get my point. I’ll do anything to support their efforts.

But my friend Carole takes this stalking thing to another level. She is currently on a small Radiohead tour herself as she is seeing 5 of their shows over an eight day span. And on top of that, she also hangs out in the hotel bar where the lead singer Thom typically stays with the hopes of smelling and brushing his graying ponytail. Is she living out some twisted My Little Pony fantasy of hers or is she simply looking to create a spin-off of Love and Hip Hop called Love and Doctor’s Waiting Room Music: NYC 2018. I kid, I kid, I love their new albums.

I guess the one question I have is how far would she be willing to take it if she had access to the Ant-Man technology? And I’m not just talking the ability to shrink to an unnoticeable size but also the ability to reverse the aging process and see a younger Michael Douglas. Would she shrink just so she could sneak into the shower of 1996 Thom Yorke and claim that they actually bathed together? Or would she simply sleep on his pillow at night? I know these both sound rather disturbing but I’m certainly not above doing any of this myself. I would totally shrink myself just so I could have the ability to motorboat the 1970 version of the mom from Step Brothers! You know that she had to be super-hot back in the day! And the reason why I chose 70’s Step Brothers mom is because that was right before Burt Reynolds got to her. I don’t know for sure that they ever banged but it’s Burt Reynolds, I just assumed he banged everything that walked by him!

Oh well, until that technology is made available to everyone, we just have to live vicariously through Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) and Hope (Evangeline Lilly). If you were like me, you were wondering where Ant-Man was while Thanos was doing work on the other Avengers in Infinity War. Well this movie, in a way, addresses that. They basically spend two hours setting up what happened to Ant-Man while all that other craziness was going down. Now don’t get me wrong, I thoroughly enjoyed this film but it really could have been reduced to a 20 minute short, especially after what you witness what happens in the after credits scene.

But hey, why not give us 100 extra minutes of explosions, gunfire, and Evangeline Lilly. After Captain America rescues everyone from prison, Ant-Man is apparently put on house arrest for two years. So he spends all of his time with his daughter and his best friend Luis as they try and set up a small security business together. Meanwhile, his now ex-girlfriend Hope and her father Hank Pym (Michael Douglass) are trying to find a way to get into the Quantum Realm with the hopes of finding her mother and his wife, Janet; played by Michelle Pfeiffer, another woman I’d shrink back in time for. When Scott survived the Realm in the first Ant-Man, this gave Hank hope that his wife could still be alive.

Well when Scott reaches out to Hank after a weird inexplicable connection between he and Janet occurs, they break him out of house arrest with the hopes that they can use that connection to find her. But word gets out about what they’re doing and a new adversary arises in Ghost, a beautiful British version of Meghan Markle who is looking to use his technology to survive.

The introduction of the Wasp (Evangeline Lilly) is certainly cool, especially when you first see her kicking the asses of black market dealers in a restaurant but the character that steals the show is Ghost. It’s not just that she’s beautiful but that her superpower is the coolest thing I’ve seen since the Albino twins in Matrix: Reloaded. They really should’ve given her some dreads and bad teeth. And it’s because she’s so cool that it’s hard to root against her. You just wish that they could resolve their differences so they could band together, go find Thanos, and bring the Black Panther back to life. Wakanda forever!

Oh well, the cool fighting that takes place helps you get past that and has you begging for more, especially when you see a 200 foot Ant-Man riding a scooter around downtown San Francisco. Well that and all of the humor that’s in this film. Rudd is his usual funny self and even Luis’s storytelling hasn’t lost its edge.

Clearly this film was made for the sol purposes of making money but even with that in mind, I walked away feeling as though it was money well spent. I give Ant-Man and the Wasp a rating of FRESH and I suggest that you pop in.