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12 Rounds Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
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$9.99 Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
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Ant Bully, The
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MPAA 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.
| GENRE(S): | Adventure | Animation | Comedy | Family/Kids | Fantasy |
| WRITTEN BY: |
John A. Davis
John Nickle (book) |
| DIRECTED BY: | John A. Davis |
| RELEASE DATE: |
DVD: November 28, 2006 Theatrical: July 28, 2006 |
| RUNNING TIME: | 90 minutes, Color |
| ORIGIN: | USA |
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...
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?
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