You could tell from the trailer that Ant-Man and the Wasp wasn’t intended to be a particularly serious movie. Unfortunately, it wasn’t a particularly funny one, either.

Dr. Hank Pym (Michael Douglas) and Hope Van Dyne/Wasp (Evangeline Lilly) briefly open a tunnel into the quantum realm. Scott Lang/Ant-Man (Paul Rudd) magically receives a message from Janet Van Dyne/original Wasp (Michelle Pfeiffer) that’s she’s still alive after all these years in the quantum realm. Then it’s a relentless series of size jokes and feds acting like Keystone Cops. The whole thing is very one-dimensional and mostly falls flat. Oh, there’s also an antagonist named Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen) who meanders in and out and mostly exists to give Ant-Man and Wasp someone to fight with. Walton Goggins shows up and plays pretty much the same guy he always plays.

I must give some credit to Michael Peña as Luis. He’s not given much to work with, but he manages to be pretty funny, nevertheless. He’s clearly the best part of any scene he’s in. Abby Ryder Fortson also does nice work as Ant-Man’s daughter, Cassie.

Paul Rudd and Abby Ryder Fortson. IMDb.com.

There are some humorous bits, but most of the best ones are already in the trailer. The action scenes mostly revolve around rapidly changing sizes of characters and objects. Yeah, I know, that’s Ant-Man’s (and the Wasp’s) shtick, but it got kind of tiresome and repetitive after a while.

I admit I got a kick out of the giant Hello Kitty Pez dispenser. IMDb.com.

While it wasn’t a great flick, it wasn’t an awful one, either. It was flat, but not painful. Until the very end, that is. After the movie was basically over, the audience was subjected to one of the most heavy-handed, out-of-the-blue mid credits scenes ever.

Spoiler alert

Ant-man goes into the quantum realm to harvest quantum energy for use in healing Ghost. Hank, Hope, and Janet are all “topside” monitoring him. In the middle of the countdown to bring him out, everyone goes silent. Quick cut to shot of Hank, Hope, and Janet all disintegrated.

It was clearly done to 1) create tension in an otherwise largely tensionless film, and 2) tie into the broader Marvel story arc. It was a serious problem, though, for a couple reasons. First, if 50% of all people disintegrated when Thanos snapped his fingers, the odds of three people standing next to each other all disintegrating together is only 1 in 8. Not impossible, but also not all that likely. Second, the scene violates the Marvel Universe’s own internal logic. It was clearly shown in Avengers: Infinity War that people had a few seconds to react between the time they started to disintegrate and their final dissolution. One of the three should have had the presence of mind to hit whatever button it took to bring Ant-Man back before they were completely gone.

End spoiler

Besides the ham-fistedness and violation of Marvel’s own rules, this scene made one thing very clear. Up to this point, the various Marvel films had been largely stand-alone movies with ties to a broader story arc. With the ending to Ant-Man and the Wasp, however, it’s clear that, at least until the Infinity War arc is complete, the movies are more like chapters of one long story. In other words, if you don’t watch all of them, you won’t really know what’s going on. It’s an all or nothing proposition for at least the immediate future.

Overall rating 4/10 (deducted points for the heavy-handed mid credits scene)