Honey, I shrunk the hero: Ant-Man is a comic caper about an insect-sized action man. What a shame it's not as funny as it thinks it is 

Ant-Man (12A)

Verdict: Marvel, but not marvellous

Rating:

Tiny human beings, whether shrunken or just born that way, have inspired story-tellers for centuries, and doubtless will for centuries to come.

Tom Thumb dates from 1621, and it’s not such a leap from him being swallowed by a cow to Paul Rudd, playing the titular superhero in Ant-Man, running from a tsunami in the form of water splashing into a bath.

Rudd is Scott Lang, a cat-burglar who finds high-tech ways of stealing from the rich and giving to the poor (another concept that’s been knocking around for a few centuries).

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Paul Rudd plays Scott Lang, a cat-burglar who finds high-tech ways of stealing from the rich and giving to the poor - before becoming Ant-Man

Paul Rudd plays Scott Lang, a cat-burglar who finds high-tech ways of stealing from the rich and giving to the poor - before becoming Ant-Man

At the start of the film this latter-day Robin Hood has just served three years in San Quentin jail, but resolves to go straight for the sake of his young daughter, now living with his ex-wife and her new man, who happens to be a cop.

Unfortunately, even mundane jobs at ice-cream parlours are hard to hold down when you have a prison record (‘Baskin Robbins always finds out’, is the recurring joke). So without much persuasion from his old cellmate Luis (Michael Pena) and Luis’s two dim cronies, Lang agrees to one last enriching heist, on a spooky house owned by a mysterious scientist, Dr Hank Pym (Michael Douglas, with a mysterious-scientist goatee).

Yet all he finds in the heavy-duty safe are a few chemicals and a suit with matching helmet, which he tries on and — hey presto! — he’s the size of an ant.

Lang agrees to one last enriching heist, on a spooky house owned by a mysterious scientist, Dr Hank Pym (Michael Douglas, with a mysterious-scientist goatee)

Lang agrees to one last enriching heist, on a spooky house owned by a mysterious scientist, Dr Hank Pym (Michael Douglas, with a mysterious-scientist goatee)

Dr Pym, it turns out, is the discoverer of a natural shrinking mechanism, the so-called Pym Particle. He had only benign plans for his particle, but was then forced out of his own corporation by his former protege, the dastardly Darren Cross (Corey Stoll), who sees the ability to shrink people both as a means of making a gigantic fortune, and of wielding fiendish power.

Seemingly in league with Cross is Pym’s own daughter, Hope (Evangeline Lilly), though she sees the error of her ways when she realises he wants to rule the world.

Lang soon finds out that Pym, having masterminded the raid on his own house, had him in mind all along as the human termite who might foil Cross’s evil plans.

So he becomes a superhero, increasing in strength as he diminishes in size, and engaging with helpful battalions of actual ants, whose behaviour Pym teaches him to manipulate simply by concentrating very hard, rather like Uri Geller bending a spoon.

It’s all utterly preposterous, of course, but these outings into the Marvel Cinematic Universe, inspired by Marvel Comics characters (Ant-Man was dreamt up in 1962 by Stan Lee, now a sprightly nonagenarian who pops up here in his usual, Hitchcockian cameo), work best when we are encouraged to take them at least slightly seriously. This is where Ant-Man comes a cropper. I’m all for a spot of wise-cracking and knockabout comedy in superhero movies, but here there is maybe 20 per cent too much (notably from Luis and his rascally associates, who appear to have wandered over from an adjacent set, possibly Anchorman 3).

It’s all utterly preposterous, of course, but these outings into the Marvel Cinematic Universe, inspired by Marvel Comics characters, work best when we are encouraged to take them at least slightly seriously

It’s all utterly preposterous, of course, but these outings into the Marvel Cinematic Universe, inspired by Marvel Comics characters, work best when we are encouraged to take them at least slightly seriously

Also, daft as it seems to carp about the credibility of anything in a film about a man reduced to insect dimensions, a late-blossoming romance between Lang and Hope seems shoehorned in just for the sheer sake of it.

Perhaps these flaws would have been ironed out by Edgar Wright, the British writer-director who quit the production shortly before shooting began, citing ‘creative differences’ — that slick Hollywood euphemism for a huge barney.

Wright made Shaun Of The Dead and Hot Fuzz, so comedy is his thing, but he was replaced by Peyton Reed (Yes Man) — a man also mainly known for comedy — while the Anchorman director Adam McKay came in to gussie up the script.

It seems Marvel were determined to make Ant-Man more of a rib-tickler than a jaw-dropper.

The dastardly Darren Cross (Corey Stoll), sees the ability to shrink people both as a means of making a gigantic fortune, and of wielding fiendish power

The dastardly Darren Cross (Corey Stoll), sees the ability to shrink people both as a means of making a gigantic fortune, and of wielding fiendish power

All that said, there are some wonderful action scenes, in particular an exhilarating, climactic fight in Lang’s daughter’s bedroom, in which Thomas the Tank Engine looms larger than you can imagine.

When the essence of a story is shrinking (and enlarging), the computer-generated effects department had better be on top form, and here, predictably, they are. Moreover, while we might be more familiar with superhero powers deriving from spiders, ants are pretty darned impressive too. There’s another great sequence in which a couple of them, using their incredible strength, hoist sugar cubes into Pym’s tea.

Douglas is fine as Pym, and Rudd makes an affable (indeed, slightly over-affable) hero. Stoll is a convincing villain, too. Fans of the brilliant U.S. version of House Of Cards will know him as beleaguered congressman Peter Russo, and there’s also a fleeting appearance by John Slattery, basically reprising his role as Mad Men’s Roger Sterling.

DVD OF THE WEEK

X + Y (12)

Sentimental but absorbing story of an autistic teen, Nathan (Asa Butterfield), whose talent for maths is nurtured by a teacher (Rafe Spall), himself a former prodigy. In tissues, it’s a three-pack film.

X + Y is out on Monday

How nice to see the small screen making inroads into the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

True Story (15)

Verdict: Insipid real-life crime drama

Rating:

Mike Finkel was a New York Times journalist who lost his job and hotshot reputation in one fell swoop when he was found to have fabricated part of a feature about slavery in Africa.

So there is an ironic twist to the title True Story, which was also the name of a book the real-life Finkel (here played by Jonah Hill) wrote about his strangely intense relationship with Christian Longo (James Franco, pictured), an Oregon man sentenced to death for killing his wife and three children.

The connection is made when Finkel, trying to piece together a shattered career, learns that Longo was using his identity when he was arrested on suspicion of murder. Puzzled, he visits Longo in jail to find out why.

True Story is about journalist Mike Finkel's  strangely intense relationship with Christian Longo (played by James Franco, pictured), an Oregon man sentenced to death for killing his wife and three children

True Story is about journalist Mike Finkel's strangely intense relationship with Christian Longo (played by James Franco, pictured), an Oregon man sentenced to death for killing his wife and three children

Longo tells him that he has always been a fan, and that if Finkel will teach him to write, he, in return, will offer him exclusively his own version of events.

For Finkel it seems like a way of re-establishing his reputation. But despite his journalistic expertise, he finds himself in thrall to the seemingly less clever Longo. Better able to see what is going on, and recognising that Longo is, in fact, a manipulative narcissist, is Finkel’s girlfriend (an under-used Felicity Jones).

It’s an intriguing tale, and the forthcoming re-issue of In Cold Blood, the 1967 adaptation of Truman Capote’s celebrated book, should remind us anew that the relationship between crime reporters and convicted killers can be psychologically fascinating.

Rupert Goold, the British theatre director whose first cinematic feature this is, could perhaps have crafted a compelling play from the material. But as a film, partly because it seems fundamentally stagey, it never quite takes off.

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