The Overt Comedy Of The Marvel Cinematic Universe: Ant Man Is Enjoyable!

The Good: Funny, Good special effects, Decent performances, Moments of character
The Bad: Predictable plot and character arcs
The Basics: The Marvel Cinematic Universe highlights the sidekicks and
back bench characters in Ant Man, which is successful as a comedy film!


The strategy from the executives in charge of the Marvel Cinematic Universe has become fairly evident over the last few years of the franchise's Phase 2 films: Marvel/Disney releases (at least one) "safe" film (one with a well-established character or team) each year and one "risk" film. The "risk" film is one that is not "guaranteed" to blow away the box-office because it is either not a sequel or does not feature one of the a-list Marvel Comics superheroes. For example, last year, amid all of the sequels from Avengers-heroes, Marvel released Guardians Of The Galaxy (reviewed here!). This year, after the reliable-hit The Avengers Age Of Ultron (reviewed here!), Marvel's addition to Summer Blockbuster Season is Ant Man.

Ant Man represents the largest risk to the Marvel Cinematic Universe Marvel has taken since Iron Man (reviewed here!). Had Guardians Of The Galaxy not been a sleeper-hit, it could still have been written off by the studio as an attempt to offer backstory and insight into the villain of the forthcoming The Avengers: Infinity War and the consequences for the fans would not have been huge because virtually the entire story happened off-planet. But Ant Man is very much based on Earth and it is a risk, like Iron Man. Revisionists like to forget how much of a risk Iron Man was: Marvel tried to launch the Marvel Cinematic Universe five years prior with the (usually) reliable fan-favorite Incredible Hulk headlining a film that flopped, the protagonist of Iron Man was not even the highest-paid actor in the cast, and the comic book Iron Man was not even the most-popular (or even top five!) book Marvel Comics was producing at the time. Marvel took an interesting approach with Ant Man to mitigate the box office risk.

Perhaps the oddest choice - at least on the surface - that Marvel Studios made with Ant Man was to create a film that did not center around the original and widely popular incarnation of the title character. Instead of having Dr. Pym, the original Ant-Man, as the film's protagonist, Ant Man focuses on Pym handing the mantle of Ant-Man to Scott Lang. The jaded fan in me suspects that not having Pym as the film's lead is an excuse for lazy writing - Pym is one of the four smartest people in the Marvel Universe and having to write for a character who is that smart can be intimidating for writers and for the audience - and an attempt to make broader appeal for the film (with Tony Stark and Bruce Banner, adding Dr. Pym to the mix makes the Marvel Cinematic Universe very scientist-heavy, which appeals more to geeks - read "niche audience"). As a business move, passing the mantle in Ant Man makes sense: it allows Marvel to make an overt comedy film and it introduces a whole "secret history" element to the Marvel Cinematic Universe - there is a "lost era" in which Dr. Pym as Ant-Man would have been the dominant super-hero in the Marvel Universe!

Ant Man is the closest film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe to overtly focus on the second-string characters in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (they haven't taken a risk like that outside Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D.). Ant-Man is trained for a very specific mission and he only goes up against one adversary. As well, Ant-Man encounters only one Avenger . . . and it's The Falcon, who is presented almost as a parody of himself in the film. But, for all the hedging of bets, Ant Man works and it does exactly what it is supposed to: create a comedy film that still fits into the Marvel Cinematic Universe and add another hero who will have an integral part in saving the Earth from Thanos in The Avengers: Infinity War. And should Robert Downey Jr. decide to opt-out of any of the future Marvel Cinematic Universe films, it seems like Paul Rudd is being set up to fill the same niche for one-liners.

Opening in the late 1980s, Dr. Hank Pym confronts Peggy Carter, Howard Stark, and S.H.I.E.L.D.'s Mitchell Carson. Pym controls his revolutionary Pym Particle, which allows him to change size. Rather than let that technology fall into S.H.I.E.L.D.'s or Stark's hands, Pym resigns from their arrangement and becomes a recluse. Almost thirty years later, in the wake of Ultron's attack in Sokovia, Scott Lang is released from prison in San Francisco. Having served his sentence for burglary, for returning the ill-gotten gains of a company to its exploited customers, Lang is determined to fly right and get a legitimate job in order to get access to his daughter, Cassie. But, after getting fired by Baskin-Robbins, and with his friends pressuring him to do another heist, Lang succumbs and agrees to help break into a reclusive millionaire's safe. When he does, he becomes suspicious because the safe he cracks leads only to a strange suit.

Lang tries on the suit and discovers that it gives him the ability to shrink down to about 1/4" tall and the voice in his helmet tells him that the man from whom he stole the suit is impressed with him. Lang attempts to return the suit, but is arrested while leaving Dr. Pym's house. While in custody, Lang is visited by Pym, who is pretending to be his lawyer, and is broken out of jail by ants who bring him the shrinking suit. Escaping the police, Lang properly meets Dr. Pym, who explains why he is interested in Lang. Dr. Pym's corporation has been taken over by Darren Cross in Pym's absence and Cross has spent the intervening decades developing his equivalent to the Pym Particle. As Cross's work nears fruition, he is negotiating to sell his weaponized shrinking suit to the highest bidder. Seeing that Cross's perverted vision of his work is about to fundamentally change the world's landscape - Cross is selling an army of shrinking suits for defense, espionage, and the elimination of personal privacy - Pym begs Lang to break into his old laboratory and steal the prototype before Cross's work is finished. Trained by Pym's estranged daughter, Hope, Scott takes up the mantle of Ant-Man to save the world from Cross's twisted army.

In many ways, Ant-Man is a very typical super hero movie and an equally-obvious heist film. Were it not for Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D. using a number of similar elements on almost a weekly basis, there would be a lot in Ant-Man that was new to fans of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. So, on the plot and character arcs, there is not a lot that is original.

That said, Scott Lang is an interesting protagonist and Michael Douglas brilliantly plays Pym as his straightman, even though he is forced to deliver an incredible amount of the film's exposition. The performances in Ant-Man are good, but play more to the performer's established wheelhouses, as opposed to expanding their range. Evangeline Lilly plays Hope Van Dyne in essentially the same way she played Kate on Lost (reviewed here!) and Paul Rudd plays Scott Lang with his usual knack for shtick. But, Rudd's performance is virtually interchangeable with his acting in Wanderlust (reviewed here!) and Anthony Mackie's appearance as The Falcon does not add anything truly substantive to the character's role (not Mackie's fault, it's just the part that was written for him!). Lilly and Rudd have virtually no on-screen chemistry, which makes their final scene seem like a cheap plot point, as opposed to something organic from the characters.

But more than the predictability, Ant-Man suffers from problems with the details. While there are fleeting moments where the special effects are erratic (it's tough to do the scale consistently properly and make miniaturized characters visible on screen!), the real issues come in the exposition and the tie-ins to the larger Marvel Cinematic Universe. Dr. Pym says that he cannot re-take the mantle of Ant-Man, which implies there are dire consequences from constantly using the Ant-Man suit. Lang doesn't question that adequately and Pym's lack of explanation makes him seem either dishonest or disingenuous. At the other end of the spectrum, the moment Cross's buyers are revealed to be HYDRA, the fact that Grant Ward does not appear on-screen feels like a real missed opportunity (especially considering where his character ended up at the end of the second season of Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D.).

Ant-Man is funny and all evidence points to the idea that it will hold up under multiple viewings better than some of the earlier works in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Pym is a great mentor and his dynamic with Hope is one of the most realistic relationships yet depicted in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Ultimately, Ant-Man is one of the better endeavors in Summer Blockbuster Season this year.

For other films currently in theaters, please check out my reviews of:
Dragon Blade
Fantastic 4
Jenny's Wedding
Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation
Lila & Eve
Minions
No Way Jose
Terminator Genisys
Inside Out
Jurassic World

7/10

For other elements of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, please check out my Marvel Cinematic Universe Review Index Page for a listing organized from best to worst!

© 2015 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Not As Bad As I Anticipated, Yes Man Is Good For A Laugh Or Two.

The Good: Decent soundtrack, One or two laughs
The Bad: Predictable plot, Chameleonic acting, Light on character
The Basics: Jim Carrey's latest one-line concept film is not as bad as I thought it would be, but still clearly appeals mostly to a young, less mature crowd's sense of humor.


I have been fired from an inordinate number of jobs, largely for not fitting in. Yes, despite my likable personality and quick wit, it seems often enough keeping steadily employed is more often about playing by the rules and swimming in the same direction as the other fish in the river than doing your own thing remarkably well in your own fashion. I sometimes consider future ways I might be fired and one of my more popular fantasies in this regard is becoming successful enough as a writer that I someday end up in one of the rooms where decisions about the creation of movies are made. I can easily foresee myself being in such a time and place when someone pitches an idea like, "I have an idea for a Jim Carrey vehicle where he plays a pessimistic character who suddenly has to embrace everything that is offered to him" and I'd be the one voice in the room saying, "That's a terrible idea." On my most diplomatic days, I fantasize me saying something like "It's a fine enough one-line idea, but do you actually think you can make it into a ninety minute feature that anyone in their right mind is going to want to pay money to see and then shell out for a DVD of?" Either way, I always get fired in the fantasy.

I mention this at the outset of my review for Yes Man, because clearly at Heydey Films there was no one like me to pipe up with something like that when the idea for this movie was pitched. On its surface, Yes Man is remarkably similar to the concept for Liar Liar, but this film doesn't have the charm or presence of Jennifer Tilly. The result is a comedy that is astonishing only in that the writers, Nicholas Stoller, Jarrad Paul, and Andrew Mogel along with director Peyton Reed managed to flesh the one line concept out to a 104 minute adaptation of Danny Wallace's biography.

Carl is a man who has not been in a romantic relationship since his ex-wife, Stephanie left him. He mopes around, slouching through his days working at a bank, avoiding his best friend Pete at night in favor of watching movies alone. Peter and his other friend Rooney get tired of Carl, especially in light of Peter getting engaged. But soon after, on his lunch break, Carl is accosted by an old associate named Nick, who has declared himself a Yes Man and insists Carl join him at a seminar. The seminar - more like a cult - is organized around opening up to new experiences simply by saying yes to every new experience offered to one.

Picked out at the seminar and given a quick, but surprisingly accurate psychoanalysis by the group's leader, Terrence, Carl adopts the "yes" philosophy. Soon, he is driving around homeless people, approving everyone's loan application and learning all sorts of new skills. He also meets Allison, an artist and singer in an eclectic band and they have a pretty instant chemistry. Soon, Carl's friendships are getting better, his romantic life is working out and he is being promoted at work, all because he says "yes" to everything.

Of course, there has to be an obstacle and it takes the form of Allison learning that Carl has said yes to everything just because he's involved in this cult-like philosophy, so, naturally, she storms off. Yes Man is not terribly high on unpredictable and new character elements. No, this is pretty formulaic, exactly as one might expect because it is that type of movie. Apparently, what Heydey Films does have is a great marketing department; this is the production company that made the Harry Potter films and they appear in Yes Man conspicuously, so it's hard not to give them points for creative advertising.

That said, Yes Man is not completely devoid of laughs. I laughed three or four times. The thirteen to sixteen year-olds in the screening I was at were laughing a lot more and applauding. A lot. I suppose that speaks to the target audience. The thing is, Yes Man is almost entirely lacking in genuine humor. It's one joke. It's one joke repeated a lot and one of the things I noticed was as the movie went on, the audience was laughing in anticipation of the joke more than at the jokes themselves. Throughout Yes Man, there are the obvious setups of a question and Jim Carrey as Carl getting around to answering the question with a "yes." It's not hard to tell when the jokes are coming.

The fundamental problem, then, with Yes Man as far as concept is that humor is based largely upon surprise and while milking this one joke to death, there are almost no other jokes in the movie. In fact, the only thing I thought was funny after the first fifteen minutes was that the name of Allison's band was Munchausen By Proxy (ahh, some highbrow humor!). I suppose it is worth noting that the music in Yes Man, largely by the Eels or Jim Carrey and Zooey Deschanel is pretty decent. I suspect the soundtrack to this has more enduring quality than the movie itself.

That said, the rest of Yes Man is largely drivel. The plot is utterly predictable. Carl continues on his witless quest until he learns a Very Important Lesson and the romantic comedy aspect is entirely blase and obvious. To be fair, Carrey and Deschanel actually have some decent on-screen chemistry.

But for me, what nailed the final nails into this comedic coffin was the acting. Terence Stamp appears as Terrence and he is adequate, playing the comedic role with a deadpan quality one might expect of an actor of his caliber. Similarly, I've not seen Zooey Deschanel in enough works to critique whether or not her acting was good or not. She plays a quirky, free-spirited part in the role of Allison and that was pretty much exactly how she played her character in season two of Weeds (reviewed here!).

The thing is, all of the other main actors in Yes Man are performing either in ways that are completely familiar or as if they were mimicking the performances of other actors. So, for example, Danny Masterson plays Rooney. Masterson is perhaps best known for his role of Hyde on That 70's Show. He might not look the same in this movie, but he plays the role in almost the exact same way; understated and deeply sarcastic. On the flip side, I do not recall having ever seen Rhys Darby in anything before, but in Yes Man, he plays Norman as Mike Meyers. Seriously, anyone who subjects themselves to Yes Man and watches Norman will wonder why they didn't just get Mike Meyers to play the role. I suppose he no longer does supporting roles.

For me the greatest disappointment on the supporting front comes from Bradley Cooper. Cooper plays Peter and I have been a fan of Bradley Cooper's since the moment he appeared on Alias. On Alias, he played a nice guy and the big acting challenge one would need from Cooper following that would be for him to convincingly play a more slimy, manipulative, mean character. In Yes Man, he plays exactly that type of character, for as soon as Peter realizes that he can get anything he wants out of Carl, he begins using that whenever he wants free drinks, someone to arrange a bridal shower, etc. The problem here is, he's already done that. Right after Alias, Cooper starred in a show called Kitchen Confidential and he performed the exact acting make-over needed to assure us fans that he actually was a gifted actor. Cooper plays Peter exactly as he played the lead in Kitchen Confidential and, frankly, I wanted more from him.

Of course, Yes Man is a Jim Carrey vehicle. While watching much of the film, all I could think of was the episode of The Simpsons where Lisa sees the future and she and the man she is interested in at the time go to a Jim Carrey film festival and her observation is something to the effect of "all he had to do was flail about to get us to laugh." Through most of the film, Carrey is performing his absurd physical comedy which made him famous. Those who like that will enjoy Yes Man. The problem comes near the very end of the movie when Carrey has to play Carl in an earnest and adult way. In that scene, I kid not, Carrey does a spot-on impersonation of Billy Campbell's performances from Once And Again. It is uncanny. Carrey tends to either perform as Jim Carrey Schtick or he is a chameleon. Yes Man has both aspects.

Yes Man is predictable, largely obvious and not the best showcase for any of the performers in it. But, it is not devoid of all humor and after seeing it, there's no reason for me to update my list of "Worst Movies Of 2008." This is not one of them.

For other works works with Jim Carrey, please check out my reviews of:
A Christmas Carol
How The Grinch Stole Christmas
The Truman Show
Batman Forever

5.5/10

For other film reviews, please visit my index page by clicking here!

© 2011, 2008 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.

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