In Which I Still Do Not Quite Meet Paul Rudd

I have had a crush on Paul Rudd for twenty years now (ever since Clueless). It intensified when I moved to Kansas City; he's from there and is apparently very cool and down to earth when he goes back home to visit. He usually goes to a bar where my friend works and the whole staff loves him. I probably could have met him there, except that whenever he went back to KC I was back in NJ visiting my family.

On Thursday, I got slightly closer to him when he hosted a screening of Ant-Man that we got to go to in NYC. He totally lived up to my crush expectations (ie he's just handsome in person and he was funny and charming).

Sadly, the intro was brief and the movie started soon after.

My boys are way more into superheros and comics than I am, but thanks to my aforementioned crush, I'd say we were all equally excited to see the movie.

Lovebug, at 9, was riveted during the entire movie. He didn't even finish his popcorn, which I don't think has ever happened before. The (imaginary) science and the action scenes were perfect for Lovebug. Plus, there were a lot of jokes - even within the action scenes. The action scenes and the humor within them got 6 year old Hugmonkey to pay attention. He's usually not very into movies - he lost interest during the final fight scenes of  The Karate Kid recently - but he was pretty good during Ant-Man. I found the movie family-friendly, as far as plot, language and violence level go. A lot of times, especially with live action family friendly movies, I find that I get bored. I didn't with Ant-Man and neither did Hot Guy.

My only issue (well, besides the fact that there could have been a few more shirtless Paul Rudd scenes) with the movie was that the only people of color in the movie (excluding a cameo by Falcon) were criminals. They were funny and basically harmless criminals, but criminals nonetheless. Which I wouldn't necessarily have a problem with, if there'd been even one other named character of color who wasn't a criminal. Even on Orange Is the New Black there are portrayals of people of color who AREN'T criminals. But this is a greater Hollywood problem, and while I wish Ant-Man had broken the mold, I'm not going to dismiss the movie because of it.

Our whole family loved the sense of humor in the movie and the way it linked to other movies in the Marvel franchise. I freely admit that I didn't get a lot of the references, but Hot Guy and the boys did and they were very excited about them. The action sequences and special effects were incredible. Paul Rudd was awesome (that's a totally unbiased assessment, by the way). We had an excellent time and I think you will too.