Ant-Man and The Wasp (2018, Peyton Reed) (Patreon)

56/100

Briefly bailed on this at the 20-minute mark, because it seemed to be getting bogged down in its nonsensical plot at the expense of both comedy and action. A quick skim of reviews suggested otherwise, though (e.g. Gleiberman: "The plot...is just a MacGuffin, a frame on which to hang the hijinks. The movie is all jokes and movement"), plus I knew that I'd likely have to come back to it down the road, which would entail sitting through all that exposition a second time. Onward! To even more nonsensical exposition!* Terrific when it's funny (Peña once again repeatedly steals the movie, radiating sheer delight when shouting a line as simple as "Ohhh, you got Pezzed!"), monotonous when it's pretending to care about Ghost's pain or serving up a tech-hungry Boyd Crowder. The most inspired idea by far was making the actual MacGuffin an entire laboratory building shrunk to the size of a small suitcase, complete with collapsible handle and wheels; in general, Reed and the F/X team have more fun scaling inanimate objects (salt shaker, Hot Wheels car) up and down than they do switching back and forth between The Incredible Shrinking Man and Attack of the 50 Foot Woman. Still, all the money they threw at those sequences seems a bit of a waste, since what I'll mostly remember from this movie is Luis breathlessly explaining that Chicanos love Morrissey because they relate to his melancholy ballads, or Randall Park's FBI agent being informed that they have a lead and turning away from an online course in close-up magic to reply "Ooo. Love leads." In fact, just give me a non-superhero comedy centered on those two characters. The world seems ready for it.

* Just as a f'rinstance: Janet, having taken over Scott's body, informs Hank and Hope that they have just two hours to rescue her from the quantum realm—the next such opportunity will be a century away. And why is that, exactly? Remember, she was only able to make contact, after 30 freakin' years doing who knows what, because Scott went subatomic and made it back. Did he coincidentally happen to do so during some brief once-per-century window? Whence this ticking clock? From writers half-assing an artificial sense of urgency, that's...whence.