Antman & The Wasp Is So Bad  It makes Our Flying Jatt Look Cool

Ant-man & The Wasp

Starring: Paul Rudd, Evangeline  Lily, Michael Douglas,  Michele Pfeiffer, Michale Pena, Laurence Fishburne

Directed  by Peyton Reed

Rating: *(1 star)

At some point in this atrociously-penned pain in the posterior posturing as a super-hero flick, the  soul of the heroine’s missing mother—who has disappeared  into a quantum realm—enters  the hero Paul Rudd’s body. And hebegings  to talk  and behave as  the Missing Mother.

Now, if you consider it’s Michelle Pfeiffer that Paul  Rudd is standing in  for, you would realize how  dumb  and short-sighted the script really is this time.An actor of  the caliber of Laurence Fishburne  is reduced to a confounded speck in a frazzled universe. The villains, so vital to the  efficacy  of the super-hero sagas is here reduced  to a low-life  petty criminal named Sunny Birch and an ailing disoriented female  antagonist named Ghost(called ‘Bhootni’ in the dubbed Hindi version) who starts on  a shaky ground and  quickly goes downhill .

 This  would have been a great time to LOL in , say, a spoofy version of the super-hero narrative  like Deadpool. But this time, the makers mean  business,  and they mean  really serious business. We are supposed to take  all these images of shrinking cars and quantum conundrums  dead seriously.Ha ha ha.

 But  look who is having the  last laugh.Not us,for sure. This humourless amateurish  attempt to seduce the Marvel maniacs  into  lobotomized  submission  is so devoid of a  life force it feels like  a force-fed dose  of  something we’ve already overdosed  on many times before.Really, the Marvel universe needs  to re-invent itself . Ant-Man…. is the weakest super-hero film from Marvel .

The actors also seem unconvinced by the material provided  to  them. They either ham or   look like they would rather be  anywhere than in this film. Paul Rudd playing Ant-man  ‘cheetee’s  his way through a script that allows him to take  potshots at Captain America and the  kingdom  of Marvel comics too.These  spots  of artificial  sunshine cannot decimate  the  gloom that falls willy-nilly over  the  hinterland  of this disoriented dud.

And Evangine Lilly’s  Wasp is devoid of bite of sting.Who can blame the lackluster performers when  the  narrative moves like  a pantheon in remission?

The plot is  skimpy and silly, if not outright  idiotic. The writers don’t even try to add substance  to the lightweight happenings. Very often  the  episodes  jump from one (absurd) level to another without  even trying to  join the  dots. Trapped in the morass  of inescapable  silliness is the still-beauteous Michelle Pfeiffer  who is the  Missing  Mother we started  the  review with.

I wished there was  more Pfeiffer and  less  of the vapid actors who  try to look  all fired  up  even as the  engines  of the narrative stutter and stammer  in urgent pursuit  of  a well-oiled  machinery. The narrative has  a device whereby characters  can shrink  and the disappear from view.  How I wish some such device could be used to make this incredibly stupid film disappear.

Don’t waste  your time watching this. Go see  Soorma instead.  Respect  our own genuine  heroes and not some frightful flight of  fancy created in Uncle Sam’s kitchen.