Rating (3 out of 5)

I liked Ant-Man, and I like the core set of characters.  One thing I liked about the original Ant-Man was the humor, and they kept that in this movie as well.  Michael Peńa, TI and David Dastmalchian come back to make a good comedic team.  That was the high point of the movie for me.

Low point was the actual plot, to go back to the Quantum zone/whatever its called, and rescue Pym’s wife (Evangeline’s mom).  Oh yes, through some miracle she is still alive in the son after almost 30 years there by herself.  When they do rescue her, she is some Quantum warrior woman, that you would expect from some video game, with perfect make-up.  Tsk, Tsk, Tsk.  Just a shame.

That was the challenge, standing in their way is the FBI who were hunting for the Pym’s and had Paul Rudd under how arrest.  This is all related to Civil War.  So the challenge for all of them was to save the wife, allude the FBI, oh because that isn’t exciting enough, let’s add 2 other characters.

There was a woman who phases in between things, and wants the Pym technology to fix her Quantum phasing issue.  Trying to help her is Laurence Fishburne, an old acquaintance of Dr. Pym. Phase girl, played by Hannah John-Kamen, is fairly one dimensional character.  While I appreciated the drive, I didn’t appreciate the approach.

Also working against them was Walton Goggins, who plays an international technology and arms dealer who is trying to get the Pym tech and building.  Because the building has been shrunk down, he can steal the building and all the tech in it relatively easily.

I guess the Pym’s have learned how to shrink an entire lab so it is like a suitcase, and carry around matchbox case with all of their cars that become real size cars.  The cars now have levers in them that they can grow and shrink at the drop of a hat.  This makes for some entertaining chase scenes.

The chase scene through San Francisco was entertaining, and I thought well done.  Of course we are able to get the building back, save the mom, and then defeat phase girl.  Another bad part, was that mom was able to save phase girl, just by setting her hands on her.  Lame.

I have to admit, I just didn’t like the part about rescuing the mom.  It seemed a stretch to me.  Then to have the convenient ending of mom saving phase girl, was just too much.

In the first movie, Paul Rudd’s character is portrayed and the intelligent rebel who was imprisoned.  In this movie, it seemed as though confinement made him lose IQ points.  He had been under house arrest for two years, you think he would have studied something in that time, after being into electronics prior to his life of crime.

There were parts that were funny, like when he went to his daughters school to get the trophy, and his regulator was stuck, and he was the size of a school kid.  That was funny.  If it hadn’t been for those funny bits the movie would have been just a boring action movie.

Of course, you have to stay for the credits to see the connection to Infinity Wars and the next Avengers movie.  Paul Rudd is stuck in the Quantum zone, while Evangeline, Mom and Dad are all erased from the world.

If, and this is a big if, they had discovered that in the Quantum Zone, when you go small like that, time and aging isn’t quite the same.  That by going in you are basically put into stasis, you could have had a young mom come out.  Now that is something  have believed.

However, there was the weird plot issue of the mom inplanting a beacon of sorts into Paul Rudd’s brain.  She basically took over at one point and was able to update the algorithm into the computer.  By the way, I have trouble moving from Mac, PC and other devices to remember the interface.  She/he jumped on like a pro.  Didn’t like that either.

If you are a Marvel fan you will like this movie.  A solid showing and great for the whole universe.  I look forward to see how Ant-Man plays into the Infinity Wars.  I was disappointed, and think that is where it gets to a 3 for me.