What’s this all about?
A big part of doing a Nicolas Cage Movie Marathon is watching films that you’d never otherwise watch.
A big part of being mid-2000’s Nicolas Cage is accepting literally every script that’s handed to you, so that you can make your castle payments.
Those realities bring us here, to The Ant Bully, a 2006 computer-animated kid’s movie about anthropomorphic bugs. I know what you’re wondering. “Is it that dark, cynical Dreamworks ‘CGI talking bug’ film that’s all about the evils of society?” No. That’s Antz. “Ah, so it’s the family-friendly Disney Pixar ‘CGI talking bug’ film that’s all about overcoming adversity,” you think. No, that’s A Bug’s Life. Both of those films came out in 1998.
A full 8 years later, Warner Brothers weighed in with their own “CGI talking bug” film, The Ant Bully, in which a bullied young boy gets magically shrunken to the size of an ant, joins an ant colony, fights evil, and saves the colony, all while learning some sort of lesson.
It’s your typical kid’s movie about wild fantastical adventures and crazy characters. Usually, these have a pretty clear-cut moral for the little nippers to learn, but this one covers everything from “don’t pick on people smaller than you,” to “be nice to your Mom,” to “work together with others as a team.” It’s all over the place, and perplexingly, got a PG rating, presumably because of all of the poop and dick jokes.
This one cost $50 million to make, and made $55 million at the box office. In the real world that’s $5 million profit. In Hollywood, that’s a huge bomb. Ants made about $70 million in profit, depending on how you count the beans, and A Bug’s Life made $240 million in profit, for comparison.
Who is Nick in this one?
Nick plays “Zoc,” an ant witch doctor of sorts. Nick adopts a Mr. Spock like diction throughout, even though all of the other ants and bugs just speak normally. It’s evident that Nick tried to deliver a solid performance, but perhaps he overthought this one.
Who else is in this one?
Julia Roberts (Pretty Woman) Plays “Hove,” a female ant, and Nick’s girlfriend. She’s just sort of a plot moving lady-type. Her performance was fine, but could have been delivered (probably better) by any number of professional voice actors.
Paul GIamatti (Straight Outta Compton) Plays Stan Beals, an unscrupulous exterminator who wants to destroy the ant colony. He’s played as over-the-top evil, which I guess makes sense. Paul Giamatti really gets into this role. Why would he make this?
Meryl Streep (Adaptation) Plays “the Queen.” She’s like the spiritual leader of the ants, or something. Their social hierarchy is very unclear. Anyway, she has about four lines, and I’m sure that she recorded her whole performance before lunch. Why would she make this?
Regina King (How Stella Got Her Groove Back) plays “Kreela,” a trainer of forager ants. Her role is better defined than many of the other characters’ roles. and she delivers her lines well.
Bruce Campbell (Maniac Cop) plays “Fugax,” an ant scout. He’s adventurous, bold, and brash. Bruce Campbell handles this with ease, as you’d expect, but I’m not at all clear why this character exists. Maybe Bruce just showed up on set one day, and the director said, “what the hell, let’s put Bruce Campbell in this.”
Ricardo Montalban (The Naked Gun) Plays “Head of Council.” He’s like the ant chief, or something. He’s not in charge. That’s the Queen. Maybe he’s an ant middle manager? I don’t know. Anyway, he’s Ricardo Montalban. He’s fine. This is his last film role before his death. That’s kind of like how Raul Julia’s final film was Street Fighter. It seems anticlimactic.
Lily Tomlin (9 to 5) Plays “Mommo,” the main kid’s wacky grandma. She’s in a subplot that goes nowhere and does nothing. I don’t know why she’s here.
Cheri Oteri (Saturday Night Live) plays the kid’s Mom. She kind of sucks, but that’s Cheri Oteri for you.
Did you see that?
This is a CGI movie about an ant colony, and a human child who shrinks to the size of an ant. I realize that this is a kid’s film, and not a scientific documentary, but I couldn’t get over the constantly shifting scale. In one of the opening scenes, we see an ant carrying what looks like half of a peach or apricot, and later, we see that the ants are far smaller than a sunflower seed.
In some scenes, these ants appear to be tiny, smaller even than typical kitchen ants, but in others, they seem to be the size of a large cockroach. It’s infuriating given the computer-generated nature of the animation. It isn’t like some physical modeller built a prop at the wrong scale. Some computer animator just couldn’t be bothered to scale his digital models properly.
It’s stupid and lazy, and persists through the entire film. -Michael
When Lucas was first shrunk and the ants were carrying him off, an ant touched him and commented on how soft he was and that his skeleton was on the inside. Then a child ant proclaimed in shock “He’s inside out!?!?”. It was hilarious. I enjoyed the joke immensely. – Sarah
What were Nick’s best parts?
Near the very end of the film, the Queen releases the kid from his sentence of living as an ant, and everyone celebrates. In this one scene, Nick stops talking like he’s doing a Mr. Spock impression, and just speaks normally. His lines feel genuine, and are well delivered. -Michael
Nick did way better voice acting in this film than he did in The Christmas Carol. He was so consistent throughout this film that I found it hard to pick a best or worse scene. I guess I preferred it when his character decided to work with the human, so I’ll call out the scene where they go to the wasps to work together as this was the beginning of that part. – Sarah
What were Nick’s worst parts?
There’s an early scene in which Nick tries to concoct a magical potion to prevent human attacks. He goes into a lengthy shouting incantation of nonsense words. It’s literally Nick yelling nonsense. I’m sure the 8-year-olds found it funny. I didn’t. -Michael
For worst, I’m going to go with the early scenes of his ranting about the humans. It was extremely Nick Cage like, but oddly, I felt that he could have screamed a bit more. – Sarah
How was the movie?
Obviously, I am not the target audience for The Ant Bully, so my opinion may be less relevant. I am perplexed, though, by something about the film’s actual intended audience.
Why do they make so many animated movies (especially CGI ones) with a huge number of film stars who would almost certainly only be recognizable to adults? Did anyone in the 8-to-10 year old demographic in 2006 decide that instead of Cars, or the new Ice Age film, they wanted to see the one with Paul Giamatti and Meryl Streep?
You could argue that the inclusion of known stars as voices is intended to draw in the parents, but does it really? I’ve taken a lot of kids to a lot of movies. I almost never knew who was going to be doing the voices in advance, and I almost never cared after. Even if the big names were a draw, why not get one or two “celebrity” voices, and fill the rest of the cast with actual voice actors?
It’s not just this movie, either. The previously mentioned Antz has both Woody Allen and Sharon Stone. A Bug’s Life has Kevin Spacey and Dave Foley. Some of those people are probable sexual deviants, and some of them are delightful, edgy Canadian sketch comics (if you’re reading this, Dave Foley, call me). Why would anyone put them in a kid’s movie? If your kid knows who Sharon Stone is, you might want to review your household viewing policies.
Hollywood is full of super-talented voice actors, but instead of Maurice Lemarche or Charles Martinet, we get Nick Cage as our wacky ant witch doctor. I feel like I’m taking crazy pills. Hell, I’ll bet Maurice Lemarche doing a Nick Cage impression would be funnier than actual Nick Cage, here.
Ultimately, we get a film that’s pretty thin plot-wise, and features a bunch of Hollywood names reading lines in more-or-less their normal voices. It’s not really clever or fun. -Michael
It’s a kid’s movie. It was okay, but fairly forgettable. As Michael previously pointed out, the general topic of ants had already been done and done better. But I enjoyed myself. I likely won’t watch it again, but if I was watching a kid that just had to see it, I would be okay with it. – Sarah
Yeah, but did you like it?
It wasn’t the worst kid’s movie that I’ve seen. In fact, it wasn’t even bad, but I’m not sitting here quoting it to my wife like I did for Madagascar. -Michael
I did. – Sarah
Where can I watch it?
You can rent it on Amazon Prime.
Leave a Reply