What is it with the recent cinematic fascination with ants? When I spot ants crawling around near my doorstep, I spray them with various products that will hopefully exterminate them before they over-run the place! And it doesn't bother me in the slightest that I'm killing them, because they're PESTS if I don't dispose of them, they'll multiply, they'll spread into the inside of my house, they'll nest in my walls, and such like. Strangely, ants have become the recent darlings of animated film makers, what with the Woody Allen film Antz (1998) and now The Ant Bully. While the latter of those two films is perfectly watchable, impressively animated and quite well-voiced, it still rankles with me that one of the film's main messages seems to be that we humans should let ants live in peace. Sorry, but I don't particularly want my house ruined by the little blighters! More appropriate in this film is the other principal message, about kids valuing team work and friendship
. it's quite true, I think, that too many modern children are a little selfish and obnoxious, and the adventures that befall young Lucas Nickle certainly help him to emerge a better person for his ordeal.
Young Lucas Nickle (voice of Zach Tyler Eisen) is small and bespectacled, which makes him the ideal target for local bullies. He's so fed up at being the object of their attacks that he lets off steam by bullying anything smaller than himself, especially ants. Lucas thinks nothing of stomping on anthills in his garden or drowning them with his garden hose. Worse still, his parents seem totally oblivious to his suffering, and he insists on doing everything by himself since his miserable existence has taught him just one thing: that there's no-one in the world he can truly trust. When Lucas's parents go away for a romantic weekend in Mexico, leaving the young lad in the care of his paranoid, conspiracy-theorising granny, he finds himself enduring a weird adventure that changes his outlook. One night, an ant wizard named Zoc (voice of Nicholas Cage) pours a magical potion into Lucas's ear that shrinks him to ant size. The insects then take Lucas to see the Ant Mother (voice of Meryl Streep), who declares that his hostility towards the species must be cured by making him understand what it is like to be an ant. Lucas is taught about the ant lifestyle by friendly Hova (voice of Julia Roberts), and after initially despising the idea of team work and effort he gradually learns that they are values worth acquiring. Ultimately, he comes to love the ants and helps them to defend themselves when a bug exterminator turns up to annihilate them once and for all
There are a couple of nice ideas amid all this. Particularly good is the scene where Lucas guides a group of his ant friends into his house and they cross the front room by using flower petals like parachutes, getting power and momentum from a fan in the corner of the room. As they fly across the room, they pass a huge painting of Hawaii and it's almost like they're paragliding across some Hawaiian bay. The animation is exceptionally good, as it always seems to be nowadays what with the incredible advances in technology that the past decade or so has made possible. The voice work is quite good on the whole. Roberts is sweet as Hova, Eisen holds his own well as the young hero, and Bruce Campbell has a ball as an ant-adventurer called Fugax who pretends to be tough but is a big softie-at-heart. Cage seems less convincing as the ant with magical powers, perhaps because he has all the most embarrassingly corny lines in the script, while Streep's character appears in a mere two scenes and is somewhat peripheral to the action. The Ant Bully got a big thumbs-down from the critics, but in fairness it's a passable little film that can be enjoyed agreeably enough. No-one will ever call this film a classic, but it provides harmless entertainment if you're in the right frame of mind.
Young Lucas Nickle (voice of Zach Tyler Eisen) is small and bespectacled, which makes him the ideal target for local bullies. He's so fed up at being the object of their attacks that he lets off steam by bullying anything smaller than himself, especially ants. Lucas thinks nothing of stomping on anthills in his garden or drowning them with his garden hose. Worse still, his parents seem totally oblivious to his suffering, and he insists on doing everything by himself since his miserable existence has taught him just one thing: that there's no-one in the world he can truly trust. When Lucas's parents go away for a romantic weekend in Mexico, leaving the young lad in the care of his paranoid, conspiracy-theorising granny, he finds himself enduring a weird adventure that changes his outlook. One night, an ant wizard named Zoc (voice of Nicholas Cage) pours a magical potion into Lucas's ear that shrinks him to ant size. The insects then take Lucas to see the Ant Mother (voice of Meryl Streep), who declares that his hostility towards the species must be cured by making him understand what it is like to be an ant. Lucas is taught about the ant lifestyle by friendly Hova (voice of Julia Roberts), and after initially despising the idea of team work and effort he gradually learns that they are values worth acquiring. Ultimately, he comes to love the ants and helps them to defend themselves when a bug exterminator turns up to annihilate them once and for all
There are a couple of nice ideas amid all this. Particularly good is the scene where Lucas guides a group of his ant friends into his house and they cross the front room by using flower petals like parachutes, getting power and momentum from a fan in the corner of the room. As they fly across the room, they pass a huge painting of Hawaii and it's almost like they're paragliding across some Hawaiian bay. The animation is exceptionally good, as it always seems to be nowadays what with the incredible advances in technology that the past decade or so has made possible. The voice work is quite good on the whole. Roberts is sweet as Hova, Eisen holds his own well as the young hero, and Bruce Campbell has a ball as an ant-adventurer called Fugax who pretends to be tough but is a big softie-at-heart. Cage seems less convincing as the ant with magical powers, perhaps because he has all the most embarrassingly corny lines in the script, while Streep's character appears in a mere two scenes and is somewhat peripheral to the action. The Ant Bully got a big thumbs-down from the critics, but in fairness it's a passable little film that can be enjoyed agreeably enough. No-one will ever call this film a classic, but it provides harmless entertainment if you're in the right frame of mind.