Paul Rudd as Scott Lang/Ant-Man and Jonathan Majors as Kang the Conqueror in Marvel Studios' ANT-MAN AND THE WASP: QUANTUMANIA. Photo by Jay Maidment. © 2022 MARVEL.Jay Maidment

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- When I was a kid my asthma medicine gave me wild dreams. They were set in this strange, psychedelic world inhabited by weird creatures doing inexplicable things. Looming over it was an equally inexplicable sense of impending and inescapable doom. When I woke up, I wasn’t sure where I was or what had just happened.

“Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania” is that.

The third film in the series starts off as the kind of light-hearted, small-stakes, family-centered superhero comedy you’ve come to expect from Paul Rudd’s Scott Lang/Ant-Man and Evangeline Lilly’s Hope Van Dyne/The Wasp. Both are living their best post-“Endgame” lives. He’s basking in the celebrity of a second-tier Avenger, she’s using Pym Tech to save the world.

Their blended family includes Scott’s daughter Cassie (Kathryn Newton), now an 18-year-old social activist with a super-suit of her own which allows her to change sizes at the push of a button. Hope’s father Hank (Michael Douglas) is content tending to his army of ants and spending time with his wife Janet (Michelle Pfeiffer), back after being stuck in the Quantum Realm for 30 years. But she is still having difficulty reacclimating herself to life on the surface.

Things go awry when they’re all accidentally zapped into the subatomic world beneath our universe. The two families are separated. Scott and Cassie hook up with a group of Freedom Fighters led by the warrior Jentorra (Katy O’Brian) and telepath Quaz (William Jackson Harper). Janet leads Hope and Hank to a meeting with the pretentious Lord Krylar (Bill Murray), who can put them in touch with the one person who can send them all back home.

That’s Kang (Jonathan Majors), a villain so powerful and dangerous he was exiled by a mysterious force to the Quantum Realm. He and Janet have some history and unfinished business. Leveraging Kang’s powers to get back home without unleashing an unfathomable evil onto the rest of the universe in the process is going to be tricky.

Turns out, exhausting too. The Quantum Realm is a visually imaginative and fantastical place bursting with color, sound and movement. It’s a world unlike any other seen before on screen. But it’s too much. The subatomic world often feels like the result of a brainstorming meeting that began with the phrase, “There are no bad ideas.” So, you end up with Veb (David Dastmalchian), a cute, cuddly blob obsessed with humans and their holes; MODOK, Corey Stoll’s Darren Cross (the baddie from the first “Ant-Man” film) reimagined as a giant head; and the self-explanatory Broccoli Man.

My eyes, ears and brain felt physically tired halfway through the movie’s 125-minute runtime.

Evangeline Lilly as Hope van Dyne/Wasp in Marvel Studios' ANT-MAN AND THE WASP: QUANTUMANIA. Photo courtesy of Marvel Studios. © 2023 MARVEL.Courtesy of Marvel Studios

The bombastic and chaotic tone drowns out the quieter, more human moments. Director Peyton Reed and screenwriter Jeff Loveness get some mileage out of Scott and Cassie’s maturing relationship and the uneasy dynamic between Hope and Janet, but not enough to really tug at the heartstrings. The backstory of the Freedom Fighters is undercooked, wasting the talents of O’Brian and Harper. Worse, Kang’s motivations and powers are never fully explained. “Loki” viewers will recognize the character as a variant of He Who Remains from that show’s season finale, and up-to-date fans of the Marvel Cinematic Universe know he’ll serve as the Thanos of the next “Avengers” outing. But none of that really helps this movie.

What’s left is a plot that isn’t much more than a series of chases and battles. This, thank goodness, is where the movie is most successful. The proclivity of Ant-Man, the Wasp and Cassie to switch between small, medium and large at a moment’s notice give the action sequences a frenetic and unpredictable beauty, even if you have trouble figuring out what exactly is happening at times.

The film is saved by its performances, too. Rudd and Lilly are their reliable selves as the quippy dad Scott Lang and the strong-willed Hope Van Dyne, though their romantic coupling feels forced. Still, the two leads prove they’re capable of carrying a film with higher stakes than we’ve seen before. Newton’s Cassie should fit nicely alongside the MCU’s next generation of superheroes. And Douglas and Pfeiffer add some much-needed gravitas to the proceedings.

But it’s Majors who steals the show by displaying the screen presence, charisma and complexity worthy of building the next phase of a multi-billion dollar franchise around. Murray’s brief appearance is the anomaly, a scenery-chewing cash grab that would make Marlon Brando blush.

So, yeah, “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania” is a lot, a sensory overload of a movie that has its charms but ultimately leaves you feeling numb and empty inside. And good luck making sense of it. But 31 movies into the MCU, the risk of FOMO is real. So, if you’re on the fence about it, I’ll respond with the same three words my now-wife told me when I asked her to move in with me three months after we met.

“Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania” is rated PG-13 and opens wide in theaters on February 17 with preview showings the previous night.

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