"Paul Rudd"

2015 · Peyton Reed · 117 min · Action / Comedy

Ant-Man arrived as a palate cleanser in a franchise that was starting to take itself very seriously, and it works precisely because it keeps the scope small. Paul Rudd's charm carries the film through its weaker stretches, Michael Pena steals every scene he appears in, and the shrinking sequences deliver some of the most inventive action in the MCU. The villain is underwritten in ways the film never overcomes, and the origin story structure follows a template audiences had seen several times by 2015. Those are legitimate knocks. But the heist framework gives the film a shape that most superhero origin stories lack, and the sense of fun is infectious enough to forgive the places where the formula shows through.