There was only one seat left in the session of Mama Mia! Here We Go Again that I had driven to see at Tweed City. The trouble was it was in the very front row and This Paper does not pay me anywhere near enough to sit ten feet from the platinum-blonde humanoid creature still being referred to as Cher and the rest of those perfect-toothed cheery souls poncing around ersatz Greece – much as I love the songs of Abba. So, hoping for the best, I turned off my brain, followed the trail of popcorn and entered the world of Marvel, only to find that I had jumped from the frying pan into the fire. Honestly, these super-hero movies are getting stupider and stupider. The Ant-Man, Scott Lang (played by Paul Rudd, whose acting career peaked when he was a regular on TV’s Friends), embarks on a mission that will take him into an insanely coloured other dimension, where he might connect with the long-dead wife of the still pining Dr Hank Pym (Michael Douglas). Joining Ant-Man is the Wasp, Hope Van Dyne (Evangeline Lilly). I liked the bit at the start where he was driving down a street in New York in his little Dinky car – it was mildly amusing and cleverly done, as were all of the scenes in which everything got shrunk with what amounted to a click of the fingers – but I simply could not engage with what was going on. Joining Douglas in the cast are some quality actors, including Michelle Pfeiffer, Laurence Fishburne, Bobby Cannavale and MichaelPeña, the fellow who always gets the part of the good-guy Latino who is sidekick to the Main Man. But a wasp? FFS! If it were meant to be funny, as was Deadpool 2, it might have been bearable, but the ‘drama’ is underpinned by philosophical poppycock.Therefore, the moral of the story is if you want to get a decent seat at cinema’s latest cash cow – get there early.
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