“How about Antman?
Antman? It’s already taken”

I came across this on Netflix a few months back, but since Ant-Man is out now, I thought it was time to watch it. It’s a Danish film and I would like to take a moment to be thankful that it is not Lars Von Trier. Anyways, this film follows the adventures of Pelle Nøhrmann (Oscar Dietz). One day after running away from bullies, he winds up in someone’s backyard. It’s there that a radioactive spider…I mean an ant crawls up onto his neck and bites him. Then we get that shot inside the brain from X-Men and so many other movies.

After passing out, Pelle goes home to bed. Then he has the bat dream…I mean the ant dream. That night he goes into the kitchen in a daze and eats a bunch of stuff. The next day powers begin to emerge.

You know the milk carton itself has expired when it sticks to your hand

No worries! That door needed to be replaced anyways.

But none of that stuff matters. Meet the greatest superpower of all time. His urine is acidic. Yes, he actually uses that later by peeing on a lock.

But Pelle isn’t alone. He has a friend named Wilhelm (Samuel Ting Graf) who is a comic book nerd. He helps Pelle to figure out his powers and design a suit. Now they just need some criminals. They decide to hang out in a parking garage which we all know are dens of sin. Sure enough, a woman has her purse snatched and Antboy comes to the rescue.

After this, one final piece of the Antboy setup comes to light. He ate all that stuff the first night because in order to maintain his powers, he must eat sugar. So, instead of batarangs in his utility belt, he carries sugar. Once he becomes well known enough he is approached by a girl whose sister has been kidnapped. She wants him to rescue her. Enter the villain of the film: The Flea. I’m guessing because The Tick was already taken. He was doing research that could have saved his mother, but it was cancelled by the company he was working for. That’s why he has kidnapped the daughter of the CEO, demands money and his resignation.

The Flea (Nicolas Bro)

Turns out that Antboy and The Flea have similar origins except that The Flea must drink blood. That’s why he carries containers of it on his back with a tube running into his neck.

It proceeds like you imagine it will from there. It’s a fun kids superhero movie and it’s short too. I do like that The Flea isn’t a complete joke. I also enjoyed the comic book panels it uses numerous times as well as directly referencing other superheroes. That makes the film not feel like it’s trying to exist in a vacuum. You know what I mean, those movies that have people do Internet searches, but magically don’t use Google or any other search engine in existence.

I enjoyed it and look forward to seeing the sequel.