Critics that have seen Ant-Man give their take on the latest Marvel superhero!
The fans can’t wait to see what Ant-Man is like when it comes out on July 17th! With Paul Rudd, Michael Douglas, Corey Stoll and Evangeline Lilly, Ant-Man looks to be another classic superhero movie made by Marvel! But that hasn’t stopped critics that have seen the movie from giving their opinion on it. The reviews of this movie are mixed, but for the most part, critics like what they have seen from Ant-Man. Check out the reviews below to see what they think of Ant-Man!
“The Marvel Cinematic Universe can be an awfully big, noisy and repetitive place to spend your time and money, but at its best, it can also allow for humor, whimsy and lightness of spirit — all qualities that come into play in ‘Ant-Man,’ a winningly modest addition to the ever-expanding Disney/Marvel family…The refreshingly (and literally) down-to-earth scale of ‘Ant-Man’ is largely a factor of Rudd’s charming performance as the nicest, most boy-next-door cat burglar imaginable — a most unlikely superhero who, despite his newfound abilities and washboard abs, refuses to take himself or his endeavors too seriously.” —Justin Chang, Variety
“If you don’t have Thor’s hammer, Hulk’s bulk, Captain America’s resolve or Iron Man’s know-how, what’s an Avenger to do? The answer provided by Ant-Man is to go small, smaller than Black Widow’s fingernail, and exude a good sense of humor, which is precisely what floats this latest addition to the Marvel cinematic firmament… Although the story dynamics are fundamentally silly and the family stuff, with its parallel father-daughter melodrama, is elemental button-pushing, a good cast led by a winning Paul Rudd puts the nonsense over in reasonably disarming fashion.” —Todd McCartney, The Hollywood Reporter
“Ant-Man is a cut-and-shut muddle, haunted by a ghost, produced by a high-end hot dog factory, by turns giddying and stupefying. Watching it is like channel-surfing between Hot Fuzz, a duff early 90s Michael Douglas drama and the very schlockiest bits of Interstellar.” —Catherine Shoard,The Guardian
“As a would-be witty heist movie, ‘Ant-Man’ tries to embrace the tropes of the genre— the botched exercises, the bickering, the amusing test-runs that fail— but the movie often lands on the familiar, playing more like a greatest hits collection of heist touchstones rather than a clever update. Tonally and spiritually, ‘Ant-Man’ resembles the first ‘Iron Man’ film, playfully glib, but with a light-on-its-feet touch that is also slightly goofy. But the movie’s mood vacillates, sometimes resembling one of the pre-‘Iron Man’ super hero movies of the early aughts (it’s not quite 2005 ‘Fantastic Four’ broad, but it’s a little corny), especially in the finding-its-footing first half.” —Rodrigo Perez, Indiewire
“Playfully funny, visually engaging and altogether relevant to the larger Marvel Cinematic Universe, Ant-Man will be some people’s favorite Marvel film — in particular kids, who finally have a shrinking movie of their own. The trick of any Marvel production is getting the humor tuned just right — and there’s funny crawling all over Ant-Man. Movies likeAvengers: Age of Ultron sprinkle in humorous beats to counterbalance nihilism. But Ant-Man is instead flecked with bits of melodrama, which are necessary to the story even if they tend to interrupt the fun. Jokes and sight gags are where Ant-Man exceeds all Marvel movies — and Marvel couldn’t have been any clearer in that mission, casting comedy everyman Paul Rudd as Scott Lang and handing the film over to Peyton Reed (Yes Man, Bring It On, The Break Up) to direct after Edgar Wright dropped out of the project.” —Josh Dickey, Mashable
“Here’s some real talk: this set-up is dumb. The whole concept of an insect-sized superhero is dumb. The idea of said superhero using mental telepathy to get ants to do his bidding (yes, he does this) is insanely dumb. But Ant-Man knows it’s dumb. Rudd and Anchorman’s Adam McKay rewrote the script after Edgar Wright left the project, and what they’ve constructed is a movie that knows just how skeptical people are going to be, and gets around the problem by winking at nearly every major trope we’ve come to expect from superhero movies… Self-aware blockbusters certainly aren’t new; Phil Lord and Chris Miller have built their career with projects like The Lego Movie, and Jurassic World is using its anti-blockbuster sentiment to beat every record in the book. But unlike those movies, there’s nothing callous or cynical in Ant-Man. Like most Paul Rudd comedies, it’s powered by his goofy, good-guy sentimentality, and whether he was facing off against a surprise guest star or gawking as Peña nailed yet another punchline, I found myself filled with something that’s become a rather rare commodity in superhero movies: joy.” —Bryan Bishop, The Verge
“Disappointingly, but perhaps inevitably, Reed never makes the movie his own; much of Ant-Man plays like Reed is just trying to make sense of the notes Wright left behind. (The script is credited to Wright, Joe Cornish,Rudd, and Anchorman director Adam McKay.) And while there are some inspired moments to be found, overall the film is slapped-together; not bad, certainly, but rushed and inarticulate. Jokes never quite hit their punch lines; plot strands are clunky and un-nuanced (even for Marvel). Without any real point of view animating the film, it’s hard to get a sense of why we’re watching this sideline diversion from the larger Avengers narrative. Guardians of the Galaxy, Marvel’s other Avengers-adjacent weird comedy, gleefully flung us far, far away, to a realm where comparisons to other Marvel movies became almost moot. Ant-Man hews much too closely, while still trying to be different, and ends up looking less like a delightfully oddball relative and more like an also-ran.” —Richard Lawson, Vanity Fair
“Familiar notions like ‘Doing This for My Daughter,’ ‘I Was a Distant Parent, For My Child’s Own Good,’ and ‘When Someone Says “Don’t Press That Button” in Act One…’ get trotted out in a most listless fashion. Not that the other Marvel movies haven’t relied on familiar plot turns, but ‘Ant-Man’ doesn’t provide enough dazzle camouflage to cover its tracks. The supposedly humorous sidekicks are grating, the love interest (Evangeline Lilly in a Louise Brooks bob and matching power pantsuits) generates zero sparks, and while the climactic battle spawns a memorable sight gag or two, the emotional stakes are never such that the eventual big showdown will have anyone gripping their armrests.” —Alonso Duralde,The Wrap
“For moviegoers whose knowledge of the Marvel universe doesn’t extend to its second-tier pantheon of superheroes, the thought of a microscopic do-gooder in a microscopic suit and mask may sound a bit, well, ridiculous. Neither super nor particularly heroic. But Peyton Reed’s late-summer comic-book caper, Ant-Man, should uncock a lot of skeptically raised eyebrows. Watching Paul Rudd, reduced to the size of a dust mite, zipping around with his six-legged army of mind-controlled insects and sneaking into tight, top-secret spots, it suddenly makes sense why being tiny might be as advantageous as being the size of the Hulk.” —Chris Nashawaty, Entertainment Weekly
“The film plays out very much like a heist movie, which makes for a well-paced plot, building up to an exciting third act. It manages to mix the suaveness of movies like Ocean’s Eleven and classic X-Men nerdiness in its presentation, making it feel like a indulgently cheesy comic book movie and not simply an action-packed explosive spectacle. In layman’s terms, it’s not afraid to go ‘classic superhero’. There’s no overly dramatic swelling theme every time the good guy appears on screen here, yet it retains that level of excitement throughout.” —Amy West, International Business Times
“Director Peyton Reed—who replaced Shaun of the Dead’s Edgar Wright just weeks before shooting began—deserves credit for jumping aboard a speeding train, but his inoffensive finished product proves that Marvel is more interested in protecting the house style than making great movies. Ironically, it doesn’t really matter if a superhero is big enough to punch Thor or small enough to squeeze through a keyhole: When it comes to Marvel movies, one size fits all.” —David Ehrlich, Time Out
Kudos to Peyton Reed, Director of Ant-Man, for doing a good job with the movie. Just weeks before shooting the movie, former Ant-Man Director Edgar Wright left the set due to differences in the vision of the movie. After reading these reviews, it looks like Ant-Man will be another successful superhero movie everyone can just shrink into!
Ant-Man comes out Friday, July 17th!
