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100Family entertainment at its best.
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83An effortlessly clever animated confection.
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83It 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.
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80The movie is an epic adventure with a rigorously moral point of view.
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75While "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.
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75The movie has a great time playing with ideas of scope and perspective, shifting between microscopic and macroscopic.
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70Wittily 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).
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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.
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70Based 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.
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67A derivative little tale with enough good intentions to recommend it, but not enough substance to embrace it.
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63Writer/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.
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63Take "Honey, I Shrunk the Kids," throw some "Antz" on it, and you have The Ant Bully.
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63The screenplay is blessedly free of mediocre songs and light on flashy pop-culture in-jokes.
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63Ant Bully, while not wildly fresh or inventive, is entertaining and energetic.
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58In 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.
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50Feels anonymously generic and charmlessly mechanical.
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50This 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.
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50Why bother with wit, intelligence, and emotion when children will be equally entertained by pretty images, colorful action, and the obligatory poop joke?
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50Three years in the making, seems fussed over and, occasionally, a little dull.
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50There's nothing outstandingly good or bad about the film.
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50In 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,
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50Lovely to look at but a headache to listen to.
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40The 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.
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40As kiddie entertainment it works well, with simple humour and lots of action. But there's not a lot to appeal to any accompanying adults.
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40It all adds up to a peculiar whole; fun I suppose, but not what you'd call a picnic.
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It lacks a sharp look and satisfyingly fleshed-out story and compensates with one numbing round of insect- or human-based peril after another.
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User score distribution:
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Positive: 13 out of 19
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Mixed: 3 out of 19
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Negative: 3 out of 19
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"The Ant Bully" is evidence that Warner Bros. suck at creating animations, as well as scripts for it too.
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