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Of course we like Ant-Man, like it enough to worry about whether audiences will accept Paul Rudd as a superhero. He’s adorable, but there are disadvantages to being adorable—superheroes are by definition tough. It’s not that Paul Rudd isn’t aging, but he’s aging backwards so now he looks like a younger brother of Chris Pratt.

Ant-Man 2.0 is Scott Lang, who has just finished serving a prison sentence for hacking into an evil corporation’s systems and giving people back the money it stole from them. The original Ant-Man is Hank Pym, played by Michael Douglas, and the 80s version of Michael Douglas is the movie’s best visual effect. In the comics Pym was not a nice man—in the Avengers reboot we read, he was an abusive husband and general asshat. In the movie he’s estranged from his daughter Hope (Evangeline Lilly), who kicked him out of the tech company he founded and now runs it with his former assistant, Darren Cross (Corey Stoll). But then Cross discovers the shrinking technology that Pym had tried to conceal, and now he wants to sell it to the military so Pym and Hope recruit Scott to steal it back. Scott is aided by his friends, including Michael Pena as the ex-con Luis, whose breathless storytelling skills provide the movie’s best gags.

The movie is clever, funny and entertaining, and the fathers-and-daughters theme gives it just enough emotional ballast so it doesn’t sink into sappiness. Ant-Man is considerably more low-key than the typical Marvel product, but whether it will be allowed to stay that way once he joins the Avengers is doubtful.

Yes, there are cameos by other regulars in the Marvel Universe. There are two stingers: The first shortly after the closing credits begin, the second after the credits have ended and the cleaners are waiting for you to go away.

P.S. Does anyone know the title of the science-fiction story in which the protagonist keeps shrinking and falling into different universes, each smaller than the next? We read it once in an anthology but cannot find the book.

If you watch Magic Mike XXL expecting nonstop abs and crotches bumping and grinding, you will be disappointed. Magic Mike XXL is not about male strippers, but about humans who are friends who happen to be strippers. It puts them on the road and gives them actual lives, with hopes, disappointments, desires and fears. Whatever is the opposite of objectification, that’s what this movie directed by longtime Soderbergh assistant Gregory Jacobs and shot by Steven Soderbergh himself (as Peter Andrews) goes for. It’s also very canny and respectful about female desire—the women hooting and throwing bills at the dancers are not drooling lust-crazed freaks but, again, humans owning their sexuality.

As we know, recognizably human characters equals disappointing box-office. Some women actually walked out of the screening so they missed the grand finale in which Kevin Nash, Adam Rodriguez, Matt Bomer (if that’s his real voice we’re impressed), Joe Manganiello and Channing Tatum each get a solo production number. Donald Glover (Troy from Community) shows up as a rapper-singer, Jada Pinkett-Smith as their guest emcee (Matthew MacConaughey went from playing Dallas to Dallas Buyers Club and left), Elizabeth Banks as the organizer of the male stripper convention, Andie MacDowell as a wealthy divorcee whose party they walk into, and Amber Heard as a photographer Mike gets interested in.