BEFORE: That was the last dog-based film, and I'm at one of those diverging paths again - with all the mad scientist stuff in "Teacher's Pet", it's tempting to switch gears and watch films like "Despicable Me" and "Igor" - but I think I'd rather stay on the talking animal path, since I'm only about half done, and make a switch from dogs to bugs. The connecting thread is that last night's film had a dog becoming a man, and tonight's film has a boy turning into an ant, or at least becoming ant-sized.
Another connection is that Nathan Lane from "Teacher's Pet" also voiced a character in "Astro Boy", and so did Nicolas Cage (last seen in "Knowing"), who also is heard in "The Ant Bully". I got lucky with that one - I suppose I should have looked at the cast lists in advance to make linking easier.
THE PLOT: After Lucas Nickle floods an ant colony with his watergun, he's magically shrunken down to insect size and sentenced to hard labor in the ruins.
AFTER: Well, I'd seen "Antz", but this is a whole different deal. This has more in common with "Honey, I Shrunk the Kids", but there's just one kid, and the shrinking is due to insect magic, not some wacko scientific ray (like THAT'S believable...). The ants call Lucas "The Destroyer" because of his penchant for torturing them with his water pistol (what, no magnifying glass?). To be fair, Lucas is being bullied by bigger kids and he takes it out on the ants - do you want to bet he learns some kind of empathy from being shrunk down to ant size?
That's right, the message here is quite predictable, do unto others and all that, and I can get behind it to a degree. We can only imagine what a person looks like to a bug, assuming they can comprehend us at all, especially when the last thing they see is a giant hand coming to squash them. There really is no equivalent for humans, unless you count the threat of a giant asteroid hitting the Earth, with no way for us to stop it.
(ASIDE: Jeez, do bugs treat microbes the same way we treat bugs? And what if our whole solar system is just a molecule of dirt in the toenail of some enormous giant that WE can't comprehend? What happens to us when he (gulp) clips his toenail? It's maddening! End of aside.)
I admit it, I'm guilty of killing bugs. I'd like to think I'd never kill a person, or any mammal, especially a cute one, unless it was him or me, or unless I was about to starve. Man, that's really non-committal, isn't it? But bugs and spiders are fair game, right? Especially ones that come into my house. Hey, everybody draws that line somewhere. I'll pulverize an ant or mosquito without a second thought - wrong place, wrong time, little guy - but with bees and wasps, I'd rather just avoid them.
But is this what it's come to? A movie telling kids not to kill bugs? Does this mean the pussy-fication of our society is now complete? Isn't it enough we've got kids recycling, and cleaning up parks, and doing fun-runs for charity? I sort of wish more focus had been put on the anti-bullying message here, because let's prioritize and get kids to be humane to each other first, then maybe we can think about the way they treat bugs. As it is, I think kids will just come away with the idea that ants are kinda cool, and exterminators are mass-murderers.
Yes, the villain of the piece is the exterminator, who really should be portrayed as an unsung hero. But here he's a giant (to the ants, that is) who takes delight in gassing wave after wave of insects - I doubt that most exterminators enjoy the killing aspect (which might be a sign of a troubled individual) - from watching "Dirty Jobs" I believe that most of them just look at it as part of the job. They really shouldn't be regarded as the Adolf Hitlers or Pol Pots of insects.
Also starring the voices of Julia Roberts (last seen in "Michael Collins"), Meryl Streep (last seen in "Sophie's Choice"), Paul Giamatti (last seen in "Duplicity"), Lily Tomlin (last seen in "9 to 5"), Bruce Campbell (last seen in "The Hudsucker Proxy"), Ricardo Montalban, Cheri Oteri, Larry Miller (last seen in "Valentine's Day"), and Alison Mack.
RATING: 5 out of 10 jelly beans
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