Ant Bully

The Gist

A kid has an ant hill in his lawn, which he frequently bullies. One day Nicolas Cage the ant invents a potion to shrink the kid to ant size. Voila, the kid really becomes ant-sized! To get back to his original size, Meryl Streep the Ant Queen tells that he must learn to be an ant before he gets his wish. Then Julia Roberts the caring female ant offers to teach him a trick or two to be an ant. Everything seems fine as he progresses to evolve to be an insect. Until Paul Giamatti the pest exterminator tries to destroy the ant colony.

What Do I Think?

Dreamworks must have thrown in some cash and told the creative department to think of a story involving some insects. And so they did! (Un)fortunately they have some more extra cash so they got four Academy Award winning (four!) actors to provide the voices. Thankfully there were no clashes of egos.

It was nice to see Cage doing some lightweight comedy after many of his typecast serious and tormented souls. At least I don’t get to see his depressing eyebrows here. Julia Roberts fit the role nicely and there were times that I did not recognize her voice. Paul Giamatti was excellent as the villain here.

The rest of the stuff is no groundbreaking material. Just a good enough plot to string things together, decent Nickelodeon-esque animation, throw in some comedy and make the children laugh and some cutesy moment for the ladies. Nothing for the adults though.

Rating: 6/10. Light and entertaining. Tailor-made for kids.

Last updated: 2009-08-11 21:34:26 by joekhor

The concept of this film is pretty well thought out, but something about the way it was executed just didn’t resonate with me. Don’t get me wrong, its a cute film and teaches a good less and all, but it just seemed to lack that wow factor yo get from Pixar films, or the comedic element in the Shrek franchise. I guess what I’m trying to say is that for me it felt like this film was trying to be too serious.
The voice casting is pretty good, though I think many of them just signed on because of their kids (or grandkids). Many say that Nicholas Cage is an overrated actor. I am not one that falls in that category, but at the same time, I’m not going to say he’s one of the best. Hearing him as the voice of Zoc, though, makes one see why many think he’s not that great. His performance ws quite flat.
Julia Roberts comes off as very motherly.
Regina King isn’t as sassy as we are accustomed to in her previous roles, but it is a welcome change for her to be a little soft for once.
Bruce Campbell, like King, departs from his normal characterization…slightly, but it is still Campbell, brash and sarcastic.
Paul Giamatti is pretty good as the exterminator, who serves as the villain for this film. The animators even went so far as to base the character off of his appearance, it appears.
Meryl Streep is the perfect queen of ants, but I wish she would have more lines.
The animators took more time with putting details into the bottom of shoes than they did everything else.
The action scenes are pretty good, but could be better.
This is a good family film, but it is too flawed for me to say that I wished I would have seen it in theaters. It has the feel of a direct-to-DVD film, to be honest with you. It is far from Pixar or Dreamworks quality, but it’s decent enough to watch if it comes on TV.  If you really want to watch an ant or bug film, I suggest Antz or A Bug’s Life.

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