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Ant-Man | 2015 | PG-13 | - 1.5.4

A professional burglar (Paul Rudd) receives a request to help a former superhero (Michael Douglas) save the world by means of high-tech body armor that will shrink him to ant-size, while increasing his strength. The thief accepts the offer and conducts a major heist while fighting international villains and crazed scientists. Also with Bobby Cannavale, Evangeline Lilly, Corey Stoll, Michael Peña, Tip Harris, Wood Harris, Judy Greer and David Dastmalchian. Directed by Peyton Reed. [1:57]

SEX/NUDITY 1 - An older man opens a door to a hallway at home and finds a man and a woman finishing a short kiss; the younger man jokes that the woman grabbed him and kissed him and she chuckles. In a flashback, a woman sits on a bald man's lap and rubs his smooth head.
 A man mentions "The first pair of boobs I ever touched" to a friend, who ignores him.
 A few men and women wear body hugging superhero suits and body armor that outline their bodies and emphasize muscular chests and thighs and/or female curves. A woman wears yoga pants and a tank top that clings to her curves. A shirtless man rubs some rubbing alcohol on a raw, red rug burn or shoe imprint on his ribcage. A man wearing a suit facing a urinal turns around and finishes zipping the top part of his fly (we see no flesh, and hear only the flush of the urinal).

VIOLENCE/GORE 5 - Two superheroes meet on a roof where one of them is attempting to break into a warehouse and the men fight with punches, kicks, throws and chokes; one of the men keeps changing size from ant-size to normal and back to small, confusing his opponent, who has wings and flies a few times, but cannot escape the other man; one of them men seems to disappear and the other man walks into a warehouse room on the roof and closes the large door, but is thrown back through it with a bang and lands on the roof as the scene ends.
 A man on the back of a flying ant leads a swarm of attack ants after a helicopter carrying another man; the first man enters the helicopter and fights with the other man and several others, knocking them out while he dodges laser beams from the other man's scorpion-like stingers that hit the pilot and co-pilot, knocking them unconscious; the two men fighting fall into a swimming pool and erupt out of it, sending a family screaming and they continue punching and kicking each other and shrink to small size, but the first man uses a pin pong paddle to swat the other man into a bug zapper (the man in the zapper shouts in anger and then escapes).
 A man wearing a villain's costume threatens a little girl in her bedroom before a shrunken man rides in on an ant and becomes full size, fighting with the villain: they reduce in size and fight on the top of a small toy train going around a track and one man throws train cars and a wooden bridge at the other man, not stopping him as one man uses ninja discs to increase the size of an ant and the toy train engine causing the engine to break out of the house and demolish a police cruiser; the ant, now the size of a lion, knocks down two men and runs outside.
 A man punches a male coworker and causes a bloody nose. A man punches another man in the jaw, causing the struck man to bend over and yelp. Two prisoners have a short fistfight in a prison yard, giving one man a spot of blood on one temple and the other man a slightly bloody lip. A man knocks a guard unconscious and drags him into hallway. Stinging, biting ants attack a few men who grab their necks and backs and yelp in pain.
 Animated footage of soldiers shows them firing in the air and being stopped, then thrown off screen or to the ground by unseen forces that we hear are tiny insect like creatures (we hear that the creatures are men who shrank with the help of a special body suit); a close-up of the suit shows two large stingers like that of a scorpion. Animated footage shows a helicopter firing on men who fall on the ground and we see a laptop shoot a laser beam that hits its featureless male user in the head as the scene ends (no blood is shown).
 A man in a lab turns another man into a small lump of jelly with a ray-generating machine and flushes him down a urinal. A man turns a lamb into a spot of jelly and demands that an assistant discard it; he then shrinks another lamb to two-inches long and flicks the small glass case it is in with his finger, scaring it as a woman gasps at his action. A flashback shows a woman penetrating a missile, then entering subatomic space and vanishing (we hear that the woman is dead). A tiny ant-sized man penetrates the power pack of a villain and enters subatomic space to destroy the pack's power; he encounters fractal images, items that look like planets, some crystals and murky wisps of dark plasma before inserting a ninja disc into his belt buckle and transporting back to reality, landing in his young daughter's bedroom dressed in a superhero suit.
 A shrunken man is trapped in a showcase, but crashes through the thick glass with two ninja throwing discs; outside the case, several men and a woman point guns at one another and shout as one man and a woman threaten to shoot and kill each other; the tiny man from the showcase fights several men at once, alternating between normal size and ant size, confusing his opponents, and beating them senseless (one man suffers a bullet wound in the shoulder with a 50-cent-sized blood spot, but survives and wears a sling later) before the ant-man runs through the building, alternating his size to dodge bullets from many guards; a man and a woman take a small tank off a key chain and the camera cuts to the entrance of the building, where a huge tank bursts through the wall toward the camera, creating a loud bang and a lot of debris, but no one is hurt.
 A shrunken man rides on the back of a large flying ant to lead a swarm of other ants to engage in combat against a man in a laboratory where guards fire handguns and rifles, but hit only the wing of one ant (we see the wing separate and float down by itself). A shrunken man rides on the backs of a small swarm of ants like a surfboard down a pipe full of water, then climbs up a chain of ants and out a sink drain, where he flies on the back of an ant and the swarm follows. Hundreds of guards hold and some of them fire handguns, but miss the ants as the ants enter machinery and servers and use devices that create lightning bolts to fry the servers and all backups; the ants plant small explosive charges, demolishing a high-rise building in a big bang and causing it to disappear into subatomic space after some flames appear.
 Four types of ants create large swarms in several scenes with some crawling and some flying. In several close-ups, we see large ants with moving mouthparts and wriggling legs. In a close-up, a huge ant eats a drop of nectar from an ant-sized man's hand and purrs. Flying ants make loud sounds like helicopters in a few scenes. Large blue prints roll themselves up on a table, but we hear a swarm of ants was under it and doing the rolling.
 A man breaks into a house and freezes a safe door to open it and remove a superhero suit that he tries on and when he presses a button he shrinks to ant size while he shouts and falls into a dirty bathtub as another man turns on water, which chases the ant-man like large waves; the ant-man falls through floor cracks, rusted pipes, onto a spinning record and onto a dance floor where he is almost stomped underfoot before being chased by a giant rat and he falls out a window and onto the roof of a car, where he regains his normal size and police arrest him. A clothed man wakes up in a bedroom where the floor is covered with large ants and the man puts on a high-tech suit with an earpiece that allows him to control flying and stinging ants. A man and a woman demonstrate controlling ants to put sugar cubes in a cup of tea. A man attempts to shrink and dive through a keyhole, but slams full-sized into the door three times, receiving facial bruising. A man throws glowing ninja disks to shrink or grow objects, people and animals.
 A man steals a detective's car and drives away; we later see the car crashed in a ditch and smoking from the radiator and the detective shouts in anger. Two police officers open the back of a van and pull out two men to arrest them, placing them face down on the pavement; the officers are distracted and let the two men escape.
 A man and a woman practice punching as he laughs and she punches him hard in the nose, but we see no blood as he yelps and bends over, clutching his face. Two scenes feature a man and a woman martial arts sparring with kicks, punches, throws and leg locks around each other's necks. A man has a bruised face and a large rug burn or shoe burn on one side of his abdomen as he applies rubbing alcohol to it.
 Several arguments occur in which two or three men shout at one another and in which a father and his adult daughter shout. Opening credits feature cartoon strip drawings of fists and the words Pow and Ka-Pow. A man says that his mother died. A man tells his daughter that her mother died as a superhero by entering quantum space to disarm a missile headed for the USA.
 A man riding on the back of a flying ant says he might vomit, but does not do so.

LANGUAGE 4 - 7 scatological terms, 6 anatomical terms, 19 mild obscenities, 2 religious exclamations (Oh My God, Oh God), name-calling (crazy, idiot, stupid, pussy, weird, hot shot, princess, old, old man, senile, wombats, gypsies, spooky, freaky, martyr, monster), stereotypical references to thieves, superheroes, villains, crazed scientists, corporate executives, men, women, aging people, divorced couples, police officers, African Americans, Hispanics, Russians.

SUBSTANCE USE - In a jail hallway a guard drinks a small bottle of what may be cough syrup, an older man picks up a bottle of unknown prescription medication and puts it in his pocket, a woman says that she gave three sleeping men each ½ of a Xanax pill, scientists hold cylindrical vials of liquids that cause animals and people to shrink or grow and we also see a rack of test tubes filled with colorful liquids. An upscale lounge features men and women sitting at tables and at a long bar with cocktails and glasses of wine (no one drinks), a man sips a glass of champagne in a lounge, a man drinks from a bottle of beer in an apartment, and at a large wine tasting event men and women drink from large glasses of wine while servers carry bottles around the floor.

DISCUSSION TOPICS - Societal roles of women, African-American and Hispanic stereotypes, immigrant deportation, divorce, loss, loneliness, redemption, heroes, villains, superpowers, technology, danger, risk-taking, murder, courage, sacrifice, relationships, friendship, love, respect, trust.

MESSAGE - Second chances can change ex-felons into superheroes.

CAVEATS

Be aware that while we do our best to avoid spoilers it is impossible to disguise all details and some may reveal crucial plot elements.

We've gone through several editorial changes since we started covering films in 1992 and older reviews are not as complete & accurate as recent ones; we plan to revisit and correct older reviews as resources and time permits.

Our ratings and reviews are based on the theatrically-released versions of films; on video there are often Unrated, Special, Director's Cut or Extended versions, (usually accurately labelled but sometimes mislabeled) released that contain additional content, which we did not review.


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