*½/**** Image A Sound B+ Extras C
screenplay by John A. Davis, based on the book by John Nickle
directed by John A. Davis
by Travis Mackenzie Hoover If you read reviews with any degree of seriousness, you're probably not seeing that many animated kidpix anyway, and so remarking that The Ant Bully is several cuts below the genre's low standards will fall on deaf ears. Still, I can't imagine an audience undemanding enough to not see through the film's cashing in on both the cachet of its source material (a storybook by John Nickle) and the CGI animation gold rush itself. The film is so unenthusiastic about doing its job that it's completely transparent, exposing its worship of the dollar at every turn of the screw. Even the creators of Shrek and their ilk seem to want to make the movie: there's no evidence of that with John A. Davis and his team of unmoved movers of pixels.
One more life lesson for the kiddies. Lucas Nickel (voice of Zach Tyler) is the stereotypical bullied little kid who takes out his frustrations on the front-yard ant colony. Little does he know that the ants have something in store for him: wizard ant Zoc (Nicolas Cage) has just perfected a potion that will shrink Lucas to ant-size. Strangely, once the deed is done, the ants don't simply rend him limb from limb–under the orders of the Queen (Meryl Streep), he will be taught the Way of the Ant under the tutelage of Hova (Julia Roberts). Everything goes great until, through the largesse of the most outrageous plot contrivances imaginable, an exterminator named Beals (Paul Giamatti) is contracted to snuff out the colony. It's up to the newly antified Lucas to galvanize the insect community to stop the onslaught.
That Beals is hired through lies to and cajoling of an eight-year-old–the sole introduction to his character–tells you all you need to know about the sloppiness of the writing. The script is stripped down further than it has to be, with each character given one trait flogged mercilessly and each plot point lined up neatly to the narrative line. One expects at least a few digressions that develop incidental characters and offer wayward gags from the shoddiest examples of the genre, but the only eccentric thing about the whole enterprise is the idea of Nicolas Cage as a holier-than-thou ant wizard. Otherwise, we're handed the usual Sassy Black Voice Talent (Regina King as forager Neela) and the Not-Brave Brave Soldier (Bruce Campbell as scout Fugax) without any variations on already creaky themes.
By the time Beals has unleashed his fury on the insects, it's too late: The Ant Bully has failed to generate real interest in the colony that's in jeopardy. Bitter Zoc's tedious arguments with maternal Hova–who's spending far too much time with this human–become so rote that you half-wish the lot of them would be gassed into submission. That said, they're more tolerable than the horrific scenes featuring Lucas's grandmother (Lily Tomlin), she of the loose dentures and a flying-saucer fixation. (Her comedy is more burdensome than the narrative tension it's supposed to relieve.) Duty informs me to say that kids may not notice, but given the film's total failure at the box-office this summer, maybe the tots deserve more credit than they're usually offered.
THE DVD
The Ant Bully arrives on DVD in an excellent 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen transfer.* The image is at once lustrous and sharp despite the low-detail graphics; it's an almost three-dimensional presentation that rubs your face in candy colours. Alas, the Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack is a little less exciting: though one would expect fireworks from a major animated extravaganza, discrete cues are few and far between. Hard to know whether it's the mix or the disc, as contemporary Warner titles have a habit of being hit or miss in the audio department.
Extras begin with "It Takes a Colony" (16 mins.), a making-of that actually manages to avoid insulting the intelligence of the kiddie audience (unlike the movie proper). Director Davis does an excellent job of taking us through the animation process, although he does it while getting interviewed by a CGI beetle. Seven one-minute animated shorts follow: "Hot Enough For You?" features ant sentries menaced by a magnifying glass; "World Wild Web" finds the film's comic-relief insects trapped on a spider's web; "Please Help" is a PSA for pupae of glass-colony ants; "Monster Truck" sees the film's colony threatened by a remote-controlled truck toy; "Turn it Down a Notch" has two sleeping ants disturbed by a human's loud radio; "Arrival" concerns Campbell's Fugax character showing smaller ants his collection of relics; and "Pea Brain" again thrusts Fugax into the spotlight as he tries to master an "easy" foraging exercise. None of these are strictly speaking funny, but then, neither is the film that inspired them.
Eleven deleted scenes are presented in various states of completion, from animatic sketches to near-finished product; none of them would exactly raise the level of The Ant Bully, but they would flesh out the Beals character a bit more and thus make his entrance into the movie a bit less ridiculous. There's also a scene in a birthing chamber I wish had made the final cut. A one-minute TV screensaver of a home ant colony, the trailer, and trailers for Unaccompanied Minors, The Polar Express, Hoot, and Saving Shiloh round things out.
89 minutes; PG; 1.78:1 (16×9-enhanced); English DD 5.1, French DD 5.1, Spanish DD 5.1; CC; English, French, Spanish subtitles; DVD-9; Region One; Warner
*Also available in fullscreen.
