The animated kids’ movie The Ant Bully begins with scrawny, little Lucas Nickle (voiced by Zach Tyler Eisen from TV’s Avatar: The Last Airbender) suffering a wedgie at the hands of the neighborhood bully. “What are you gonna do about it?” Lucas’ tormenter asks rhetorically. “Nothing, ’cause I’m big and you’re small.” Almost immediately after the humiliation, Lucas releases his frustrations on an anthill in his yard. He douses the insects with a squirt gun, boasting that he’s entitled to do so since “I’m big and you’re small.”
Leave it to a children’s flick to underscore a grim but universal truth. As a wise man once said, poop (this is a kid’s movie, after all) rolls downhill.
Based on an acclaimed children’s book by John Nickle, The Ant Bully details how the aforementioned ant colony weathers continual abuse from Lucas, whom the bugs have dubbed “the Destroyer.” A wizard ant named Zoc (Nicolas Cage) – what’s that? You didn’t know there were wizard ants? – resolves to halt the reign of terror. When Lucas’ parents go out of town and leave the boy in the care of his wacky grandmother (Lily Tomlin), Zoc uses magic to shrink Lucas down to ant-size. The boy awakens tiny enough to slide down his bed atop a potato chip.
Lucas is spirited away to the ant colony, where the magisterial queen ant (Meryl Streep) sentences the Destroyer to live among the ants and learn about their day-to-day lives. Writer-director John A. Davis presents a socialist utopia. Under the tutelage of idealistic Hova (Julia Roberts), Zoc’s main squeeze, Lucas is educated about the camaraderie of a close-knit community where the ants share and do their part for the greater good. At last, a children’s movie that Karl Marx would love.
Nevertheless, one particular aspect of the picture resonates above all else: The power of empathy. At its heart, The Ant Bully is about walking in someone else’s shoes – six shoes, to be exact – as Lucas comes to realize how he has terrorized the ants. The moral is telegraphed from the opening minutes, sure, but as morals go, it’s not too shabby, hasn’t really been explored in other animated flicks, and seems very relevant given today’s political reaction against empathy.
From pacifism to the importance of diversity, The Ant Bully overflows with left-leaning life lessons. All of it is well-intentioned; some of it is genuinely affecting. Much of it is didactic.
Fortunately, The Ant Bully isn’t all preaching. From the chopper-like wasps to a sad-sack glowworm, the imaginings of the insect world boast an overcharged visual style reminiscent of Davis’ Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius. The action sequences pack real excitement; a few scenes might even be too intense for the youngest viewers. And while there is no shortage of poop and pee references, the scatological humor is held in check more than most children’s pictures.
A star-studded cast supplies solid voice work. Particular standouts are cult-movie fave Bruce Campbell as a swaggering scout ant and Paul Giamatti as slovenly exterminator.
Cutting to the Chase with Phil Bacharach 