PLOT: A bullied boy who, in turn, tortures ants, ends up in their world when they administer a secret-weapon shrinking potion in retaliation. He learns lessons about working together and the responsibility that goes with being bigger and stronger.
Believe it or not, there is (or was) a small patch of plot left untrodden in CG animated kids' stories about the lives of small creatures.
Welcome to the world of The Ant Bully -- what seems at first to be a totally unnecessary addition to a sub-genre that already includes Antz and A Bugs Life.
But the movie by John A. Davis (Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius) has one trick up its sleeve that it plays to great comic effect -- the perceptual gulf between the ants' world and ours.
Yes, that's been used in the live-action world in movies like Honey, I Shrunk The Kids. But that movie had nothing like the playful quantum jumps Ant Bully makes For example: Fending off an attack by fighter-jet-sized wasps, our child-hero desperately ignites a giant discarded firecracker that blows up like a bunker-buster, scattering the attackers -- an explosion we, absurdly, then see and hear in human terms as a tiny pop on the lawn.
Away from this conceptual playground, well, what is there to do in a CG kids' movie about ants except steal from -- sorry, pay homage to -- an oversold kidflick universe? The ants are evocative of the ones in Antz, the comic relief characters are straight out of A Bug's Life, and the evil human exterminator is the second to appear in a CG film this year (after Over The Hedge) -- although as voiced by an inspired Paul Giamatti, this one is the bug-bomb, the Darth Vader of insect killers.
Still, the movie's overall cleverness makes up for its derivativeness. Based on a popular children's book of the same name, this Tom Hanks-produced film introduces us to Lucas (Zach Tyler), a small, bullied boy who channels his victimization into acts of cruelty against the ant-hill on his lawn.
In the ant world, Lucas is known as The Destroyer, and is the object of intense magical research by the wizard Zoc (Nicolas Cage). Zoc creates a potion that is administered in Lucas' ear as he sleeps. Thus shrunk, he is carted off to the hill and stands trial in front of the Queen (Meryl Streep).
Over ruling demands that he be eaten, the Queen orders him to live as an ant -- under the tutelage of Zoc's girlfriend Hova (Julia Roberts). Together, along with Hova's friends Kreela (Regina King) and Fugax (Bruce Campbell, who hams it up as much as Giamatti), they have adventures that take them from inside a frog's stomach to the interior of a garbage disposal.
The climax is a flying battle royale against the Exterminator that cleverly spoofs the Death Star battle in Star Wars.
Yes, your kids will laugh. Mine did, even the teenager, so you know they had to have done something right.
BOTTOM LINE: Yes, your kids will laugh. With nods to and deliberate lifting from the likes of Antz, A Bugs Life, Honey I Shrunk The Kids and even Star Wars, this Jimmy Neutron-style CG film knows what to plunder from the oversold kidflick universe.
(This film is rated G)
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