The Ant Bully (2006)

the audience applauded

Best movie of this year hands down!

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

This is a first rate film and for me to say this about anything to do with Animation is saying something because I am not one for animated films, But this film is chock full of Great family values like treating others how you want to be treated, and anti Bullying messages. It teaches teamwork and trust I was in to this film from the start. Please rent this form your local Library or purchase it for your kids I would say it is for all audiences YOUNG ANd Old alike. it also teaches a respect for nature which is a healthy value to teach a child I tip my hat to Warner Brothers, and to Legendary Pictures and to MR. Tom Hanks the producer.

Lucas is a rather nerdy boy with no friends. He's often bullied by his peers, including an overweight guy who won't stop giving him "atomic wedgies", and Lucas spends much of his time inside playing videogames. He vents his distress by destroying the huge anthill on his front lawn, and unknown to him the ants living there have abilities beyond human comprehension, using elements of the earth to finally get revenge on him. While he, his bimbo sister and conspiracy nut grandma are asleep, the ants shrink Lucas down and take him to the anthill where he has to learn to live in the colony and witness what his destruction has done. When he recalls hiring an exterminator to kill the ants, they all band together to prevent a mass murder of the whole colony.Ant Bully is pretty good as far as animation and plot originality goes, I'm honestly surprised it doesn't have a higher rating. Yeah it's got crude humor and some dorky moments, but come on, there are far worse animated programs out there, like Family Guy, now that's a disgusting program and I hate Family Guy! To appreciate what this film is getting at, which is that two wrongs don't make a right, you have to watch it with an open mind and ignore the annoying crude humor to see the true motives behind it. And oh, the pesticide clouds towards the end, that was wonderful, so much pollution, pollution is so wonderful... the soundtrack was kind of lame and unmemorable, but seeing Meryl Streep, who played the nuclear plant worker in the 1983 movie Silkwood, doing the voice of the queen ant, was pretty cool. Overall the voice acting wasn't bad, and the ending, when Lucas finally stands up to the bully, was pretty cool. Not a bad movie at all, you just have to see past the kind of dopey kid's stuff in it.

Not as colorful and fully resolved as A Bug's Life (1998) or as edgy and sharp as Antz (1998), this insect animated movie is lively enough for family fun if a bit flat and in the end unremarkable. It lacks a new twist or an extraordinary exposition. The shrinking of a human child to ant size so he can see how his actions affect the "little" things is OK if not a bit mundane. The jokes are not really that funny and the whole adventure of battling the exterminator is rather rushed and not very exciting, however it is a fantasy that does have a moral and is handled in an even handed manner.The problem here is that the we have been in this world before and there is nothing fresh and it all seems as though it is time to venture elsewhere in the known universe to visit our pix-elated friends. There is enough excitement to keep the toddlers attention but for the rest of us along for the ride, we have seen better and do expect something a bit more artistically enriched.

This would have been awesome in IMAX 3D. The movie as it stands is okay. The story of a picked on kid who picks on ants and then is shrunk down and forced to live among the ants has some great sequences, but also too many dead spots. Its as if the filmmakers had some good ideas but couldn't tie them together properly or that they simply couldn't sustain the momentum. It reminded me in ways of other better movies- and even Arthur and the Minimoys. Not bad but not worth taking the effort to track down a copy so you can sit down and watch.Wait to catch it in pieces on cable. 5 out of 10