Movies
Weekend Box Office
Film Awards & Top 10s By Year
All-Time High Scores
All-Time Low Scores
Wide Releases
Now In Theaters
76
(500) Days of Summer
49
2012
60
9
17
All About Steve
37
Amelia
53
Astro Boy
70
Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans
52
Blind Side
47
Box, The
61
Capitalism: A Love Story
55
Christmas Carol, A
43
Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant
66
Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs
23
Couples Retreat
39
Fame
30
Final Destination, The
34
Fourth Kind, The
41
G-Force
46
Halloween II
73
Hangover, The
78
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
66
Informant!, The
69
Inglourious Basterds
58
Invention of Lying, The
47
Jennifer's Body
66
Julie & Julia
34
Law Abiding Citizen
54
Men Who Stare At Goats, The
67
Michael Jackson's This Is It
28
Pandorum
58
Pirate Radio
39
Planet 51
30
Saw VI
53
Shorts
33
Stepfather, The
45
Surrogates
46
Twilight Saga: New Moon, The
71
Where the Wild Things Are
67
Whip It
28
Whiteout
73
Zombieland
Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
Limited Releases
Now In Theaters
58
(Untitled)
96
35 Shots of Rum
56
Adam
39
Adventures of Power
66
Afterschool
73
Amreeka
49
Antichrist
76
Baader Meinhof Complex, The
86
Beaches of Agnes, The
71
Big Fan
65
Black Dynamite
76
Bliss
26
Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day, The
44
Brief Interviews with Hideous Men
81
Bright Star
76
Broken Embraces
70
Bronson
62
Cloud 9
65
Coco Before Chanel
69
Cold Souls
60
Collapse
82
Cove, The
75
Crude
82
Damned United, The
53
Dare
50
Defamation
67
Departures
70
Earth Days
85
Education, An
55
Endgame
88
Fantastic Mr. Fox
31
Fix
49
Food Beware: The French Organic Revolution
80
Food, Inc.
xx
From Mexico with Love
28
Gentlemen Broncos
72
Good Hair
89
Goodbye Solo
63
Horse Boy, The
74
House of the Devil, The
xx
How to Seduce Difficult Women
26
I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell
70
It Might Get Loud
46
Killing Kasztner
43
Little Traitor, The
34
Looking for Palladin
80
Lorna's Silence
46
Love Hurts
84
Maid, The
45
Mammoth
75
Messenger, The
55
Missing Person, The
59
More Than a Game
34
Motherhood
62
My One and Only
48
New York, I Love You
66
No Impact Man
26
Oh My God
68
Paranormal Activity
68
Paris
79
Precious: Based on the Novel by Sapphire
73
Red Cliff
69
September Issue, The
79
Serious Man, A
65
Skin
41
Splinterheads
42
Staten Island
50
Stoning of Soraya M., The
58
Storm
82
Sun, The
49
Ten9Eight: Shoot for the Moon
73
That Evening Sun
61
Trucker
49
Turning Green
83
U2 3D
45
Uncertainty
67
Visual Acoustics
32
War on Kids
67
Way We Get By, The
65
Wedding Song, The
xx
White on Rice
59
William Kunstler: Disturbing the Universe
74
Woman in Berlin, A
43
Women in Trouble
69
Yoo-Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg
Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
Ant Bully, The
EMAILPRINTWarner Bros. Pictures
Mixed or average reviews
Based on 26 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 23 votes
Read user comments
Rate this movie >
Movie Info
Genre(s): Adventure | Animation | Comedy | Family/Kids | Fantasy
Written by:
John A. Davis
John Nickle (book)
Directed by: John A. Davis
Release Date:
Theatrical: July 28, 2006
DVD: November 28, 2006
Running Time: 90 minutes, Color
Origin: USA
Summary
RATING: PG for some mild rude humor and action
Starring Zach Tyler, Regina King, Nicolas Cage, Julia Roberts, Lily Tomlin, Meryl Streep, Bruce Campbell, Rob Paulsen, Paul Giamatti, Frank Welker, and S. Scott Bullock
When a boy floods an ant hill with his water gun, he finds himself shrunk to insect size and forced to deal with his victims.
Also On Metacritic
FILM: Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius Santa vs. the Snowman
GAMES: The Ant Bully
Also On The Web: Internet Movie Database View The Trailer Official Studio Site
What The Critics Said
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
Seattle Post-Intelligencer Sean Axmaker
It may be too intense at times for wee ones, but kids of 5 and up testing the limits of their independence in the big world should relate to Lucas, dig the crazy insect world and embrace the imagination behind the colorful adventure.
Read Full Review >Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum
An effortlessly clever animated confection.
Read Full Review >Washington Post Stephen Hunter
The movie is an epic adventure with a rigorously moral point of view.
Read Full Review >New York Daily News Jack Mathews
While "Cars" may have the most elaborate CGI effects of the season, and "Monster House?" the most original character (the house), The Ant Bully can lay claim to the most entertaining story and most rewarding ending.
Read Full Review >Boston Globe Wesley Morris
The movie has a great time playing with ideas of scope and perspective, shifting between microscopic and macroscopic.
Read Full Review >Chicago Reader Andrea Gronvall
Based on John Nickle's children's book, this computer-animated comedy starts slowly but builds into a rousing adventure capped with just the right measure of sweetness.
Read Full Review >LA Weekly Ella Taylor
Wittily manipulating scale to generate the requisite fright factor, the movie is stuffed with visual delights both lyrical (a squadron of ants hang-gliding on flower petals) and visceral (a battalion of bottle-blue wasps on the wing).
Read Full Review >Village Voice Robert Wilonsky
It's a kids' movie for kids, and Davis approaches it as though he and his cast are merely storytellers trying to reach kids rather than show-offs trying to impress their parents.
Read Full Review >Baltimore Sun Chris Kaltenbach
A derivative little tale with enough good intentions to recommend it, but not enough substance to embrace it.
Read Full Review >USA Today Claudia Puig
Ant Bully, while not wildly fresh or inventive, is entertaining and energetic.
Read Full Review >Miami Herald Peter Debruge
Writer/director John A. Davis (Jimmy Neutron) is a wizard at transforming the most mundane setting -- the front yard, for crying out loud -- into another world.
Read Full Review >Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea
Take "Honey, I Shrunk the Kids," throw some "Antz" on it, and you have The Ant Bully.
Read Full Review >TV Guide Maitland McDonagh
The screenplay is blessedly free of mediocre songs and light on flashy pop-culture in-jokes.
Read Full Review >The Onion (A.V. Club) Tasha Robinson
In spite of its predictability, it's a nifty story in the abstract, and Davis certainly makes the most of the opportunity to examine the world from an ant's-eye view.
Read Full Review >ReelViews James Berardinelli
Why bother with wit, intelligence, and emotion when children will be equally entertained by pretty images, colorful action, and the obligatory poop joke?
Read Full Review >The Hollywood Reporter Michael Rechtshaffen
Feels anonymously generic and charmlessly mechanical.
Read Full Review >The New York Times Dana Stevens
In the end, though, The Ant Bully is adequate rather than enchanting. Unsure of its ability to charm, it compensates with noise, sentiment and low humor, the usual synthetic stew served to children,
Read Full Review >Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman
There's nothing outstandingly good or bad about the film.
Read Full Review >New York Post Lou Lumenick
This generic exercise in computer-generated animation may provide passable entertainment for very young children, but adults will be less than enchanted by its preachiness, talkiness and Communist Party-line political views.
Read Full Review >The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Stephen Cole
Three years in the making, seems fussed over and, occasionally, a little dull.
Read Full Review >Empire Olly Richards
As kiddie entertainment it works well, with simple humour and lots of action. But there's not a lot to appeal to any accompanying adults.
Read Full Review >Film Threat Michael Ferraro
The Ant Bully, though short and well voiced, is nowhere near as important or influential as it tries to make itself seem and it feels more unnecessary than anything else.
Read Full Review >Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov
It all adds up to a peculiar whole; fun I suppose, but not what you'd call a picnic.
Read Full Review >Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips
It lacks a sharp look and satisfyingly fleshed-out story and compensates with one numbing round of insect- or human-based peril after another.
Read Full Review >What Our Users Said
The average user rating for this movie is 5.5 (out of 10) based on 23 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
Max K. gave it a10:
I liked the movie because it was cool and funny. I liked when the boy turned tiny. The ants gave the boy a good lesson to not be mean to them. I liked the animation very much. My family liked it too! I recommend this movie to all children and parents.
Michael A gave it a7:
A good movie, not great. It was better than Monster House. I liked the way it showed how ants look at the world from a different perspective and their opinions. Some parts can be funny and cute, but it's not the best film. The human characters weren't very good except for the granny with her teeth falling all the time and her crazed obsession over aliens. Jelly beans.
Jordan G. gave it a0:
Another annoying movie about a dumbass kid who takes his anger out on smaller creatures but they "fight back". Frankly, i think they should make a animated movie WITHOUT TALKING ANIMALS!
Ken G. gave it a6:
First half is really kind of charming and fun, but second half grows increasingly corny and dopey. It's a film children should like, but it squandered its chance of being something adults would like as much.
C. gave it a0:
Annoying. Another 3D movie pandering to an audience of retarded dumb kids aged between 2 and 7? Argh. This would make an excellent propaganda film for the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
Chad S. gave it a6:
The ants want a green "sweet rock". Unmistakably, that has to be a reference to Kerri Green. What the hell happened to her? Rent "Lucas". You'll fall in love with her. The Lucas in "The Ant Bully" wears glasses like Corey Haim did in the 1986 coming-of-age classic, which could've been dismissed as a coincidence without the jelly bean hue of choice line. As for the film, I'm impressed by its Buddhist regard for all living creatures; perhaps, creating a new legion of vegetarians. The ants also have their own religion(they worship a giant queen ant). Now that they made contact with a human, now there's the chance these insects could be colonized by Christianity. Maybe the filmmaker is smuggling in some allegory when Lucas tries to destroy the ant mound. Incidentally, this is a fantastic film for little kids. As for me, as you can tell, I had to work hard to find any entertainment value in these anthromorphic ants. Julia Roberts is one pretty ant.
Mark B. gave it a7:
It's not nearly as original as Monster House, or as consistently delightful as Over The Hedge, nor does it possess the huge cast of (literally) colorful characters that the Pixar movie featuring Larry the Cable Guy as a bucktoothed tow truck has--and its badly timed release is just the latest of many factors that have made the summer of 2006 a worse one for Warner Bros. than for just about anybody else except Mel Gibson. But this backyard adventure about a boy who learns empathy for and develops a friendship with a colony of ants by magically shrinking down to their size, and thus more or less BECOMING one of them, has enough humor, excitement and just the right amount of genuine sweetness to please kids and parents alike. It's been unjustly criticized as being a distant third-place also-ran to the 1998 CGI creepy-crawlies Antz and A Bug's Life, but The Ant Bully really has much more in common with such classics of miniaturization as Honey, I Shrunk The Kids, The Incredible Shrinking Man and (briefly but unforgettably) Fantastic Voyage. There's a subtle moral--that those who are bullied are strong candidates for becoming bullies themselves--but some terrific action sequences (especially the climactic Death Star-like attack on the exterminator), appropriately juvenile gross-out jokes (including a memorable scene thatcombines boogers AND head lice in just a few pungent secondas of screen time) and semi-gratuitous juvenile near-nudity keep things moving briskly enough to keep the message appropriately subtextual rather than heavy-handed, even if this movie is ultimately as likely to prevent kids from stepping on ants as Bambi kept generations of them from eating venison. Three brief incidental observations: 1.) Is the fact that this is a Play-Tone production part of the reason why Nicolas Cage, playing a human-hating ant who eventually softens his stance, frequently sounds so Tom Hanks-ish? 2.) Which group of parents is more deserving of a trip to child-custody court for going on a kid-free vacation and leaving their way-underage offspring under minimal care and maximum danger, the ones here or those in Monster House? And 3.) Between the villainous way they're depicted here and in Over the Hedge, are exterminators now offically the 2006 movie equivalent of lawyers, used car salespeople and telemarketers?
