“The Ant Bully” is an entertaining animated movie that I think kidswill have a fun time watching. It has great animation, good voice work,fun characters and a good lesson about overcoming your fears andappreciating the differences in others. It isn’t perfect, and the filmcritic in me has seen this kind of film done before, but the targetaudience will certainly appreciate it.
The premise is very simple: ayoung, shy boy named Lucas lives a relatively normal life in his home.He’s bookish and he has trouble with bullies, and has a lot of funwreaking havoc on the ant colony in his front yard. The colony has madea big problem on their lawn that an exterminator has been called in. Wethen cut down to the ant colony itself, where we see the inhabitantsare ants with personality and a spirit; one of which has the magicability to transform Lucas into the same size as the ants.
As Lucas is brought down to the ant colony, he finally gets to seethat the ants are living, breathing creatures that have a whole way oflife in what Lucas saw, as a kid, as just a little stump in his lawn.The colony rejects him at first and wants to eat him, but eventuallybecomes accepted as one of him and joins their lifestyle. And oh, don’tforget that exterminator who shows up later in the story.
One of the things I liked about the film is how it balances theperspectives between the sizes of the humans and the ants, and how thefilm gets a lot of mileage out of how young Lucas uses his knowledge ofhis old pint-size to live with his new very-pint-size. There’s a greatscene where the tiny Lucas makes a phone call, and he has to learn howto jump over the now enormous phone buttons and yell into the mouthpiece. Another scene involves Lucas and his ant-friends as they dodge abull-frog, who now has the size and the speed advantage.
What I also liked is how the film heavily dials-down on pop-culturejokes that have been surfacing in a lot of recent animated fare, suchas the “Shrek” and “Ice Age” series along with last year’s awful“Robots”. There are a few quirky jokes here and there that makereference to the actors playing them, but thankfully it doesn’t go toofar. This film is a long way from having music changed to reflect howthe ant colony would write the songs, and I was happy to not see an“Antbucks” or a “Sea-Ant-tle’s Best Coffee” logo on the screen.
The voice work is provided by the likes of Julia Roberts, PaulGiamatti, Meryl Streep and Bruce Campbell, who balance out very wellwith the animation and don’t draw attention to themselves. The castlist does not appear as the opening credits scroll across the screen.They do, however, get a long tribute in the closing credits of thefilm, which still annoys me. The actors providing the voice are astrong addition to the film, of course, but so are the animation teamwho rarely get the credit that they deserve, and if you’re going to seea movie just because of the voices you hear, you aren’t appreciatingthe endless amount of time that went into creating it.
“The Ant Bully” has poor timing in its release, because gnawing atme is the wish that every family who wants to see this movie willinstead choose to see the infinitely better “Monster House”, which isan endlessly entertaining and unique animated film that has style, wit,beauty and a whole lot of laughs. Had “The Ant Bully” been releasedlater on in the year, I wouldn’t be having this problem, I suppose, butthe timing problem is certainly there. It is still an enjoyable summerdiversion and I hope that it finds an audience, especially in the IMAX3-D format where the colors and depth of the ant colony can really comeout to play.
