Film Review: "Ant-Man"

Marvel movies are what people in the movie biz like to refer to as “too big to fail”. These are massive blockbusters with such gigantic budgets and huge marketing campaigns that they’re all but guaranteed to turn around a profit. They’re the type of movie that Hollywood has become content to put out and Marvel is only one of the better brands at constructing this type of film.

I’ve enjoyed all of Marvel’s output to varying degrees (even their lesser efforts have more personality and competency than the average mainstream movie that I’m never entirely turned off). But I’m also getting the tiniest bit tired with “The Marvel Movie”. Look at the basic storytelling structure and beats of almost every Marvel film and you will see that they’re really just doing variants on the same story. This becomes particularly obvious in the ways that the third acts of their films are almost indistinguishable, gargantuan, bruising, muddled CGI spectacles. It’s symptomatic of the too-big-too-fail model of filmmaking, where safe-guarding one's claim to the throne is more important than using that claim to re-invent the wheel. 

This is why it’s pleasantly surprising to watch Ant-Man. Its ambitions are as small as its protagonist. It’s a heist movie disguised as a superhero movie. It has moments of wry, almost self-aware humor that poke fun at its premise and Marvel movies in general and that make excellent use of Paul Rudd’s comic persona. There’s a romantic subplot you can recognize from a mile away that consummates itself in a hilariously low-key and self-deprecating way. This might be the most off-beat Marvel movie if Guardians of the Galaxy hadn’t already safely claimed that title. 

Ant-Man isn’t nearly as good as that other Marvel film, but it is fleet and light. It never appears to want to do anything more than hit its mark and get out of its own way. It scarcely bothers with tying itself to the larger Marvel universe. Instead, it tells an isolated story about an electrical engineer turned former career criminal Scott Lang (Rudd, his typically affable, appealing self) who wishes to go the straight-and-narrow for the sake of his young daughter Cassie (Abby Ryder Fortson). Lang fancied himself a Robin Hood-type, using his tech savvy to burglarize (not rob, that implies threat of violence) to take away money from huge corporations. His ex-wife (Judy Greer, who seems to be taking a lot of these thankless wife/mother roles lately) and her new husband (Bobby Cannavale) refuse visitation rights to him until he can get his act together. 

Lang can’t find work due to his status as a former convict. Unable to pay child support, he falls back on old way and takes a burglary job suggested by his roommates (Michael Peña, Tip "T.I." Harris, and David Dastmalchian, providing occasionally unnecessarily wacky comic relief). It’s a robbery that as it turns out has been set up by Michael Pym (Michael Dougla), a scientist and corporate mogul who’s best remembered for his attempts to shrink the distance between atoms (and thus shrinking the size of people). Pym gave up on this project when he realized its dangers. His insanely driven, and possibly also just insane, protégée Darren Cross (Corey Stoll) has reinitiated the project. Pym used the robbery to test Lang’s abilities. He’s chosen Lang to steal Cross’s shrinking suit known as the Yellowjacket.

What I’ve just described is roughly the first third of the film. It feels rushed and over-written (even my explanation of it sounds slightly convoluted). It takes unnecessarily elaborate and involved ways to get Pym and Lang together. The film’s plot contorts itself in strange ways to get at such a simple plot necessity (Why does Pym come up with this complicated scheme to recruit Lang?  It doesn’t make sense if you stop to think about it. Not that the film wants you to do that). While the film’s pretty entertaining in these early-goings, it becomes so much better once it get Lang and Pym together, along with Pym’s reluctant, skeptical daughter Hope van Dyne (Evangeline Lily). With Lang in the Ant-Man suit, training montage style, there’s a clarity and directness to the film because it’s in full-on superhero origin story mode by this point. The film begins to click on every level in the following two thirds and the films becomes so consistently entertaining from here on out that it’s easy to forget the early clumsiness.  

Perhaps some of this early storytelling messiness is due to the production shake-ups that made everyone hesitant about how the final product of this film would turn out. Edgar Wright was slated to direct the film but left production after complaints about too much studio interference (Wright still receives a writing and story credit along with Joe Cornish, while Adam McKay and Rudd also receive writing credits). New director Peyton Reed’s previous credits did little to assuage fears that the new vision for the film would be successful. Bring It On, The Break-Up and Yes Man aren’t necessarily bad films but they also don’t scream top-shelf quality. Ant-Man rarely features anything visually dynamic (it’s pretty boiler-plate and occasionally visually dull), but it’s not poorly made. 

Yet to say Ant-Man is completely devoid of dynamism would be untrue. For one thing, the action is the most distinctive and playful that Marvel has possibly ever done (McKay and Rudd’s late contributions to the script are easy to imagine as partially contributing to this. McKay’s work – Anchorman, Step Brothers – is ingeniously silly and sly). The film makes fantastic use of its protagonist’s abilities in order to construct fight sequences that are entirely unlike any from previous Marvel movies. Ant-Man moves back and forth between sizes, and he’s armed with technology that allows him to command armies of actual ants. There’s a final fight sequence fought shrunken down on top of a toy train set that is glorious. It’s funny, charming, self-aware, and still thrilling, and it encapsulates everything the film gets right. 

If Ant-Man never hits skyscraper-high heights, it’s just too grounded to care. Its mindset is scaled down, say to the size of an ant.

Film Review: "Trainwreck"

Trainwreck is the first movie directed by Judd Apatow that hasn’t been written by him. It shows. Apatow has made increasingly poor writing choices as he’s gained more clout as a super-producer. The 40 Year Old Virgin and Knocked Up were great films. But Funny People and This is 40 are films that have defenders not full-blown admirers (For the record, I think This is 40 is under-appreciated, but Funny People is, at best, a qualifiable mess). Apatow is prone to indulgence. He lets his performers (generally immensely talented) improvise and riff, and he has such genuine affection for them and their tangents that he can’t allow himself to cut much of it. He’s terrible at self-editing.

With Trainwreck, he’s constrained himself by telling a story that isn’t his own. The film is written by Amy Schumer (of Inside Amy Schumer), who also stars as the film’s lead Amy Townshend. Schumer has a distinctive voice and one that’s hard for Apatow to drown out with needless asides. There are funny bits on the margins here (particularly from a scene stealing LeBron James playing himself), but they never distract from the central story. 

Amy is a thirtysomething bachelor with no plans on settling down. She resents her younger sister Kim (Brie Larson, great with limited material) for getting married, raising a stepson, and generally having her shit together. Amy isn’t nearly close to being the titular trainwreck the film claims she is (There are distant shades of the odious arrested development of Charlize Theron’s character from Young Adult, but Amy is a far more redeemable and likable character). The title feels like the work of some studio head not anybody on the creative side here. The film never entirely passes judgement on Amy’s lifestyle choices. It observes them as if they were natural, if not also a little sad and self-defeating for any gender if glanced in the right light. 

Gender is important to accounting towards the film’s interests and success. Amy belongs to the pantheon of Apatowian Man Children (or, I supposed here, Woman Child). Gender swapping the character archetype might not on its face seem like a big deal. That is until you consider how constraining women’s roles in mainstream films typically are, especially in comedy. Until Rose Byrne’s down-to-play character in Neighbors, in films of this genre and focus, it felt like we got countless supporting female roles who were satellites and trophies of the male leads.

The judgement passed on an unrepentant female slob is not the same judgement we pass on their male equivalent (we might not even pass judgement on the latter). However, the film doesn't just flip the traditional gender and then not acknowledge what the realities of being this sort of woman would be. The film understands the different social expectations and notes them indignantly but without being brash. It calls out double standards of gender, the complicated sexual expectations of women, and the cultural shaming of women who choose not to have children. It's never preachy though, and these issues are never its primary aim. There’s an actual story here anchoring the thematic peccadilloes and improvisatory blind alleys, one with surprising pathos and warmth, and that has comedy first and foremost on its mind (and that is, in deed, very funny). 

Amy writes for what appears to be one of those horrid men’s mags. The magazine also gives off hints of the worst sections of BuzzFeed. It’s run by a strange, dismissive Brit (Tilda Swinton) obsessed with mysterious affectation. Amy seems to despise the job, has repressed this impulse out of a misguided desire to succeed in the workplace, and sticks with the job because her stunted psychological disposition refuses to acknowledge the limitations of her career choice. This lousy psychology derives immensely from her father (Colin Quinn), a raging, misognystic asshole who has instilled terrible life lessons into her about love and commitment. 

Amy is forced to reconsider her life and her choices when she falls for an athletes physician, Aaron Conners (Bill Hader), who she’s interviewing for a magazine article. Aaron is milquetoast but endearing in that way Hader is disarmingly capable of (he also put this to good use recently in the brilliant Inside Out). There are places where Aaron feels like he’s a paper thin character, the Good Guy to be won by Amy, almost a gender-swapped version of the romantic plots of practically every major Hollywood movie of a recent vintage. But Hader is able to provide Aaron a sense of insecurity and a goofiness. May be it feels peculiar simply because normally the actress not the actor would get stuck in this bland role. Consider that for a moment; it’s a little unnerving.  

I suppose one might call Trainwreck a romantic comedy. It is, though that feels like an oversimplification. It’s easy to see the genetic material of Nora Ephron and her descendants in the film. But like They Came Together it has the feeling of people who’ve consumed many rom-coms and have become fed up with how unrealistic and indulgent they are. It plays with the tropes of the genre. But it’s also smarter and bolder and less predictable than the standard cookie-cutter rom-com. The broad outlines are the familiar girl-meets-boy and romantic complications ensue but ultimately don’t matter. It should be light and trivial. But it bears the cynicism of Schumer, whose best work always seems just a little bit skeptical of well-tolerated, polite sociocultural conventions (i.e. bullshit that’s yet to be called out). Schumer clearly has more on her mind. The film is a response to the problems of the genre. Yet it also sneakily seems to believe that true love might not be a fairytale. That comes from Apatow, who behind all the raunch has always been a traditionalist and a sentimentalist. He seems like the type of person that feigns cynicism about love but whose heart swells at the clichéd happy ending. 

We can try to talk our way around it, but Schumer is only just breaking out now with this role because she doesn’t fit Hollywood’s clumsy ideals for female leads. It’s unfair that it takes a male producer like Apatow to swoop in in order to promote such self-apparent talent. It’s even more inexcusable when you realize that Apatow has made his best film in a while by giving himself over to someone else’s sensibilities.

Not all of this works, and Schumer's subversive touches are ultimately swallowed up by the tropes of the trade (and Apatow's worst impulses), but for long stretches it's hard not to admire what she accomplishes and laugh.