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The Ant Bully

Every studio wants to get into the animation biz as movies like Shrek, Finding Nemo and Cars make gazillions of dollars in theaters, on DVD, as theme park attractions, as toys for kids, as video games, and more.  However, when you get a glut of films like we will see this summer (is it just me, or do we have 1 animated film per week being rolled out?), not all are created equal.  The Ant Bully is a great example.  

Zach Tyler provides the voice of Lucas Nickle - a small boy picked on by the neighborhood kids, who vents his frustrations by terrorizing the ant colony that lives in his front yard.  The ants have dubbed him The Destroyer, but ant wizard Zoc (Nicolas Cage) is tired of living in fear.  He has developed a potion to shrink Lucas down to ant size, so he can be tried and punished by the Ant Council.  To make up for what he has done, the Queen Ant (the very regal Meryl Streep) forces the boy to live among the ants and learn their ways, so he will better understand them and appreciate their lifestyle. 

Can Lucas learn a lesson?  Will he be able to help the ants when danger arises?
 

The Ant Bully feels like a movie where the writer and director had some neat ideas for three or four scenes, then tried to force a story to evolve around them.  Sadly, there is not enough story to go around.  Now that all of us have seen mindblowing animation, story is more important than ever, and that’s where The Ant Bully fails.  We can see where this plot is going in a heartbeat, writer/director John A. Davis (creator of the FABULOUS Santa vs. the Snowman) doesn't provide a script with the wit of Monster House, and his main characters don’t bond naturally. 

Plus, Lucas (and the audience) learn very little about ants and the way they conduct their lives.  We get some platitudes about working together for the better of the collective, but never get introduced into this fascinating new world.  Who are these other bugs?  What is the ant history?  What are the different jobs?  Stuff like this engages the audience intellectually (and would naturally be taught to Lucas since he’s supposed to LEARN), opens up plot twist possibilities and draws in the audience, which The Ant Bully never does.  Davis provides some cool scenes and some harrowing moments that have the audience on the edge of our seats, but it never flows as a movie should.  Even the actors can’t save this story.

Julia Roberts doesn't do a good job as a voice actress in The Ant Bully  Her character, Hova the Ant, is supposed to serve as a surrogate mother for young Lucas when he is shrunken down, but you never get a feeling of love and motherly attention from her.  She’s flat and reads her lines without injecting the kind of feeling this character needs to make us emotionally invested in her outcome, as well as the outcome of other characters.  Cage adds some fire and quirkiness to Zoc, which is very welcome here, while Streep and Paul Giamatti don’t have the big roles we wish they would. 

The Ant Bully is based on a book, so let your kid read the book and add the kind of imagination the movie didn’t.

1 ½ Waffles (Out Of 4)

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