Paul is a recently released thief who passes a test that seems arbitrary and not particularly relevant at first, but in hindsight after watching the movie it really seems like it was completely off the wall and unnecessary. Paul had to be coerced through an exceedingly tenuous and complicated plan to rob an old guy's house and find nothing but the Ant-Man suit.
Corey Stoll plays the bad guy. He's a bald business guy who may as well have the last name "Stain" for how evil you can tell he is right off the bat. His goal is to perfect the miniaturization of organic materials. Not really sure why, though. He claims that they were already using the ray to shrink inorganic material, and that alone would pretty much make any company worth trillions of dollars. Imagine being able to ship every car imported from Japan for the year on a single plane. Imagine shrinking landfills into nearly nothing. Yes, any company that can reliably shrink and regrow stuff quickly and cheaply would be rolling in cash.
Bobby Cannavale plays a cop who is the future stepfather of Paul's daughter. Needless to say, the two of them have a contentious relationship and it adds to both the humor and the complications. And the humor, I suppose, is the key. This movie is supposed to be half-heartedly serious (with John Slattery, Hayley Atwell, and Anthony Mackie reprising their roles as Howard Stark, Peggy Carter, and Falcon respectively) and more comedic than any previous Marvel movie endeavor so far (until the much anticipated Deadpool comes out).
Evangeline Lilly plays the antagonistic daughter of genius and inventor of shrinkifying stuff, Michael Douglas. Speaking of Michael, they did a fantastic job of making him look younger for the prologue to the movie. I assume this is CG, and it is about 75% better than the stuff they did on Patrick Stewart in the X-Men movies. I remember seeing movies with Douglas when he was younger, and that pretty much looked like him. It was really good.
Story was a means to an end
Acting was actually pretty good
Dialogue could have used more humor
Direction was pretty good
Effects were very good
Bottom Line: Not the greatest superhero movie, but it's probably worth a watch.
3.0/5