The Ant Bully is a 2006 American computer-animated fantasy comedy adventure film written and directed by John A. Davis and based on the 1999 children's book of the same name by John Nickle. The film was distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures and produced by Tom Hanks and Gary Goetzman's Playtone, Davis and John A. Davis and Keith Alcorn's DNA Productions, and Legendary Pictures in their first (and so far, only) animated film. The movie included the voice roles of Zach Tyler Eisen, Julia Roberts, Nicolas Cage, Meryl Streep, Paul Giamatti, Bruce Campbell, Regina King, and Lily Tomlin. The film was a massive disappointment at the box office, making $55.2 million against its $50 million budget. Just before its release, most of the DNA employees were laid off and the studio was closed (as the result of their second and final film to be made after Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius). The film was theatrically released on July 28, 2006.
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 The movie that killed DNA Productions company studio and canceled Jimmy Neutron with tiny proportions to bully.
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"The Ant Bully isn't insultingly bad, but it did really remind me, we definitely don't need any more ant movies."
— PhantomStrider
Plot
In suburban Las Vegas, tired of weathering constant attacks on their colony, ants shrink a destructive boy, named Lucas Nickle (Zach Tyler Eisen), to their size and sentence him to live among them until he learns the errors of his ways. Guided by his insect guardians, Hova, Kreela, and Fugax (Julia Roberts, Regina King, Bruce Campbell), Lucas discovers a world he never knew existed and soon joins forces with his new friends to combat Stan Beals (Paul Giamatti), an exterminator who threatens their colony.
Bullied Qualities
- The main problem with the movie adaptation of the book is its extremely poor grasp of the source material it is based on.
- Stan Beals was never seen nor mentioned in the book since the book has no ant exterminator.
- In the book, Lucas Nickle wears glasses and "a strange hat", but while he does wear glasses in the movie, he doesn't have any hat. He looks nothing like his book counterpart.
- In the book, Lucas' bully is named Sid, but in the actual movie, he is renamed Steve. Name differences aside, he gets his comeuppance by being scared away by Lucas instead of being shrunk small by the ants and their shrinking serum, making this movie even more unfaithful than most movies for book adaptations.
- In the actual movie, Lucas' parents went on their trip for their wedding anniversary to Puerto Vallarta, a beach resort city in Mexico, but they never went away in the book.
- On the topic of Stan Beals, he is a very weak, poorly written, out-of-place, and uninteresting villain who is not much of a threat except for the insects and has a generic goal. His defeat by tarantula hawk for Lucas and other ants, who inject the shrinking potion onto Stan's rear end, misshaping the bug exterminator wasn't very satisfying. A large swarm of wasps comes by to attack, and being unable to get back into his van since he is too small to reach the door handles, Stan fearfully pedals away on a stolen tricycle, vowing revenge. Also despite being the main antagonist, he doesn't have that much more amount of screen time, since he only appeared at the beginning and the climax.
- Just like with The Lorax for O'Hare and Mars Needs Moms for the Supervisor, he is only in the movie so that the producers can make a movie about the book.
- The main protagonist, Lucas Nickle (Zack Tyler Eisen's character), is unlikable, annoying, selfish, bratty, whiny, and irritating for the most part. Even though he was never very cruel, it was too late to develop his character development. He played far more than the typical spoiled brat in the same vein as Gus from A Troll in Central Park (which was released 12 years before this) and Milo from Mars Needs Moms (which is released 5 years later after this) than someone relatable, since both share the same problem. His screams feel irritating, forced, and poor, notably when Zoc and other ants kidnap him to the anthill after he sees Zoc in a fount of glasses, standing on potato chips.
- Unimpressive, unappealing, and uninspiring animation, especially for mid-2000s standards. This is also unacceptable, considering the creator's previous film, Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius, which was released five years before, looked way better than this. Not only that, the designs of the human characters and ants look slightly uneven, uncanny, and ugly.
- Atrocious and laughably bad dialogue that sounds as if it was written by a four-year-old.
- Most if not all of the humor falls flat, since they often come across as inappropriate, juvenile, and cringeworthy in a movie for kids, by the way as a PG-rated film (or G-rated in Australia), including but not limited to:
- Steve gives Lucas an "atomic wedgie", causing the latter's underwear to rip apart, complete with Lucas remarking that he is running out of underwear as a result.
- In one scene, Lucas finds out that he has shrunken tiny to be even smaller in size than the underwear he wore to sleep that night, basically showing that the shrinking serum the ants used on Lucas only works on human skin and not on clothes.
- Stan Beals mocking Lucas for thinking he shouldn't sign the contract paper for exterminating ants since he forced him to do it, but Lucas can't decide what to do until Lucas signs the stupid contract, which he agrees with.
- The ants celebrating their victory for defeating Stan Beals with bug poop.
- Stan Beals getting his crotch bitten by a beetle during the final battle. He later gets stung by a wasp up his butt as well.
- Some butt shots of Lucas. For example, once the tiny Lucas has landed on chips, you can pause that he is naked, which is inappropriate for a PG-rated (or you guess it, G-rated) film, and in the ending, when Lucas grows back in size, he is naked and we see his butt as well, including his grandmother joking about Lucas being in his "birthday suit" and even wishing him a happy birthday thinking that it's his birthday.
- Not only that, there are some butt shots of other characters like Stan Beals too.
- Massive amounts of filler and padding; in fact, the movie spends eighty-eight minutes of Lucas and the ants doing unnecessary stuff, resulting in being boring most of the time and the pacing felt very weak.
- Zoc (Nicholas Cage's character), despite having character development, is an unlikeable and absolute insult to wizardry and witchcraft for much of the film, where he is a massive jerk and nuisance to Lucas throughout the movie and goes overused of having his personality's anger issues and hatred to humans, which causes this behavior to get stale rather fast, like the infamous scene where he accuses him of further treachery and tells him that he refuses to give him the antidote, makes him scared and run away. However, this is somewhat justified and understandable (see GQ#9).
- In fact, all of the ants (except Hova, Fugax, and maybe Kreela) treat Lucas just as badly as Steve does all because Lucas flooded and kicked the ant colony, which makes Lucas have the pointless "Butt-Monkey" role in this film.
- Awful, weak, and rushed climax. It is nothing interesting at all. As a result, it was rather too fast or slow pacing, poorly done, and very forgettable, though it can be pretty entertaining.
- It was pretty much the reason why plans for a fourth season of The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron, Boy Genius were effectively canceled, as the lackluster performance of this film led to the closure of DNA Productions in 2006.
- The romance sub-plot between Fugax and Kreela was very forced, pointless, and unearned as it is very difficult to accept or endure at all.
- It overused of many pop-culture references, such as E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, Terminator 2: Judgment Day and The Empire Strikes Back.
- Features of too many overused typical clichés, such as "main character gets bullied for being different".
- Despite being the top billing block on the poster, Meryl Streep as the Queen Ant only appears in two scenes and that's pretty much it, making her like wasted talent, even though the Queen Ant isn't as bad as the characters and her voice acting is decent.
- The premise of humans becoming ants, after begin to shrink in size is interesting, but the execution is so bad that no one can save it.
- False advertising: The marketing poster, DVD cover, and promotion image show that Lucas Nickle is using a weapon, yet he doesn't use it in reality whatsoever!
- Also, Hova is holding the baby ant, in posters but turns out it was lying since she doesn't hold it. Plus: Every female ant that isn't Hova is holding it in the movie as well.
- The story is predictable and unoriginal since it blatantly rip-off elements of other movies, such as Antz, A Bug's Life and even Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, even though the design of ants are unique and decent.
- Just like Chicken Little, this movie is extremely mean-spirited. Lucas got tortured by a local bully named Steve and his friends, which caused Lucas to take out his frustration on an anthill and attack it with a squirt gun, terrifying the colony, where Zoc decided to shrink him by pouring the potion into his ear for the potion, who succeeded happened by doing to bangs the fire crystals against each other.
- Obvious product placement for Jelly Belly in some scenes in the film, such as in Lucas' house where he and the ants are on the table, trying to cancel the deal that Lucas made with Stan Beals to exterminate the ants in his garden for contract while the other ants are trying to get jelly beans to their colony with the Jelly Belly name stuck on them, and the ending scene where Lucas gives the ant by tosses down a packet of Jelly Belly jelly beans with even the packet itself having the brand on it, which the reference is just there to promote the brand even further, which is just shameless at best.
- The film even uses some vile language for a PG-rated film, with characters tending to use the word "crap" at times in a rather vulgar way, which makes them saying the word very aggressively come off as inappropriate and suggestive for a family film.
- The movie treats its target audience rather poorly, by pandering to them with dated 2000s humor and very little morals to teach them something important aside from the moral about size, and even worse, it only looks down on kids and not all ages, which is rather disappointing since Jimmy Neutron taught kids that if you might get tired of your parents, then it doesn't mean you hate them and that they still love you with the main characters realizing that having no parent might not be a good idea, as they start to miss them and begin to feel sorry for themselves. This movie doesn't do that, however, since it is so mean-spirited and unfunny that even a kid and parents wouldn't like this movie.
- The film has a lot of plot holes.
Good Qualities
- The voice acting is decent, especially Nicolas Cage as Zoc, Julia Roberts as Hova, Zack Tyler Eisen as Lucas Nickle, Meryl Streep as the Ant Queen, Paul Giamatti as Stan Beals, Regina King as Kreela and Bruce Campbell as Fugax.
- Some funny moments.
- The soundtrack is decent and composed by John Debney.
- Despite the awful and rushed climax, it can be pretty entertaining.
- The scene where Lucas' bully, Steve gets owned is better than Stan Beals' defeat by getting his body shrunk, despite the unfaithfulness.
- The scene where Hova calls out Zoc for chasing Lucas away is very satisfying.
- There is a great scene where Lucas, Hova, Kreela, and Fugax venture into the house looking for jelly beans and seeing how a normal suburban house looks from an ants' point of view.
- Hova (Julia Roberts' character) is a very likable character and well-developed. She doesn't threaten Lucas, unlike most ants, especially Zoc, who is easily hated and angry issues.
- Fugax and Kreela could be also likable as well, despite the romance being pointless and unearned.
- Also, despite Zoc being unlikable for much of the film, to be fair, he does at least have an understandable reason for hating Lucas at the beginning of the movie. Plus, he does have a character and does grow to appreciate Lucas more near the end of the movie after Hova scolds him.
Reception
Although The Ant Bully received mixed-to-positive reviews from critics, it received mixed-to-negative reception from audiences alike. The review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes reported a 62% approval rating, based on 116 reviews, with an average rating of 6.2/10. The score from audiences was 42%. The website's consensus reads, "Sometimes inventive and witty, this animated adventure into an ant-sized world is a pleasant diversion.". On Metacritic, the film has a score of 59/100 based on 26 reviews, indicating "mixed or average reviews". The film received a user score of 5.6 on Metacritic. Audiences surveyed by CinemaScore gave the film a grade "A-" on a scale of A to F. The film earned a score of 5.8/10 on IMDb. On Letterboxd, the film has a rating of 2.2/5, becoming the 4th lowest film produced by Legendary Pictures.
Box office
The Ant Bully made $28.1 million in North America and $27.1 million overseas, and a total of $55.2 million worldwide against $50 million, deeming it a box-office disappointment. As a result, most of the DNA employees were laid off and the studio was shut down.
Videos
Trivia
- It was the last film performance for Ricardo Montalbán though he made guest appearances on both Family Guy and American Dad! before his death on January 14, 2009.
- It is the second animated film from Warner Bros. Pictures to have computer-animated, after The Polar Express.
- Additionally, both movies were produced by Tom Hanks's Playtone and feature the child's main protagonists as well as the children's books of the same name.
- Along with the theatrical release of The Ant Bully, there was an IMAX 3D version presented in only some of the IMAX theaters. The others continued to run the 3D version of Superman Returns. The special IMAX 3D version was remastered in 3D with IMAX DMR. Critics within the 3D motion picture community have given the film high marks, as unlike Superman Returns, the entire film is projected in 3D stereo. The process of turning a pure animation film into 3D is much simpler than converting a film having live actors. Some of the production took place at C.O.R.E. Digital Pictures in Canada.
- Tom Hanks originally conceived the idea for an animated film adaptation after reading the book with his child. He then sent a copy to John A. Davis due to Davis' work on the computer-animated film Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius. Davis came up with a potential take on the story within a few days. "To be honest, when I first looked at it, I thought Oh, why does it have to be ants again?" said Davis. "But the more I thought about it, I said, So what? It's got as much to do with The Incredible Shrinking Man as it does with the other bug movies. It's a completely different story."
- Hanks agreed that the story could be expanded considerably (the original book being around only 2,000 words). Keith Alcorn had a similar initial reaction to the project as Davis did. "My first thought," recalled Alcorn, "was, 'not another ant movie.' But looking at the actual story, this was really about a little boy and how he learns about the world by having to live beneath the surface." Davis states that he felt like something of a hypocrite when, while he was working on the script, carpenter ants infested his house and he called an exterminator.
- The movie was rendered on DNA Productions' 1400-CPU render farm, managed by the open-source Sun Grid Engine job scheduler. The nodes started with Fedora Core 2 Linux with a modern 2.6.x kernel, but the new AMD Opteron nodes are running Fedora Core 4. Most of the applications are commercial, including Maya, Houdini, Massive, and the Pixar RenderMan.
- The film was originally going to be released on August 4, 2006, but switched to July 28, 2006, with Barnyard moving to August 4, 2006.
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