THE ANT BULLY

Starring: Nicolas Cage, Bruce Campbell, Julia Roberts, Meryl Streep, Paul Giamatti, Zach Tyler, Lily Tomlin, Cheri Oteri, Richardo Montalban, Larry Miller, Regina King
Screenplay: John A. Davis adapted from the book by John Nickle
Director(s): John A. Davis

MPAA Rating: PG for Some Mild Rude Humor And Action

RATING: C-

****DISCLAIMER**** These reviews are for entertainment purposes only. Let it be known that I am now sick and tired of cartoons concerning ants, animals and cars. Inanimate objects should no longer be made into cartoons unless they’re about Star Jones.

Since this is the 500^th cartoon about ants, I’m wondering what the big fascination is concerning them as subject matter. Using my contacts deep within the bowels of Hollywood, I have uncovered that some celebrities actually hire Hollywood bred ant colonies to help them with their day to day lives:

Paris Hilton: Her entourage of 5 million Melrose ants are always on the go searching for the latest in music, fashion and food for Paris to enjoy. Several soldier ants have been secretly dispatched to also search for her underpants, singing voice and long lost virginity.

Tom Cruise: Secretly hired by a group of paparazzi, these black ants are doing what the rest of the planet is hoping they’d do which is find proof of his baby’s existence and see if Katie Holmes is trapped in a Scientology basement hoping she doesn’t become the next Jon Bonet Ramsey headline.

Samuel L. Jackson: Samuel ‘Love’ Jackson’s giant battalion of African ants stay out of sight ready to jump on any fool who even looks at Samuel the wrong muthafuckin’ way.

Orlando Bloom: He’s recently fired his group of purple, pink and yellow ants because of security breaches and leaking ‘questionable sexual orientation’ news to the press. One disgruntled ex-ant employee gave an interview on Extra claiming that Orlando always sits down when he pees. Ouch.

Johnny Depp: His Golden ants are trained to continuously feed him abnormal lines of bullshit about how he's the most versatile actor on the planet. But Johnny's little ass kissers are all executed by a competing army of Richard Grieco Straight To DVD ants.

Our ‘Pick on someone your own size!’ review this week is The Any Bully starring the voice talents of half of Hollywood. The Ant Bully is a story about Lucas Nickle, a young boy who takes his frustrations out on the ant colony living in his front yard. Since there’s no way in hell the ants are gonna put up with those shenanigans, they shrink Lucas down to ant size to show him the effect he’s had on their lives and to teach him the values of teamwork and loyalty. At least that’s what I think it’s about. It could also be a sick and twisted cartoon where Lucas is shrunk down and the ants slowly start to pick apart his flesh as the Queen ant lays eggs in Lucas’ mouth. Guess you’ll have to take your kid to find out.

Every studio wants a chunk of the Pixar or Shrek dollar. They’d probably get it too if they stopped making cartoon movies that would be better shown on tv. Visually the animation is typical CGI fare. Not as good as Pixar’s but better then anything made by the French. When Lucas is brought down to the ant colony, I was hoping for some crazy city type atmophere where the animators just got stupid and put in whatever ideas they had after a strong night of Jell-o shots. But instead, we’re stuck with a plain old anthill with plain old caverns and plain old colors. Nothing to visually catch your eye unless you like to count how many different shades of purple can be put on the screen. The human animation is also nothing special. Paul Giamatti plays the evil exterminator and his facial expressions are the most animated of the lot. The ants themselves are made to look more exotic and almost tribal, but like real ants, they all look alike. I guess there isn’t much you can do with ants. You could make different rocker/rapper/goth ants if you wanted to, although if they had a Tommy Lee ant I’m sure the colony would kill it first chance they got.

The main problem with The Ant Bully really isn’t its Afterschool Special message about compassion or whatever the hell point they were trying to make. The real problem is in the voice acting. I’m tired of studios hiring big name actors do cartoon voiceovers. There are a ton of out of work voiceover artists who can do wonderful cartoon voices but are skipped over for big names. It didn’t work well in Cars and it doesn’t work here. Whenever the Shaman ant (voiced by Nicolas Cage) speaks, I can only imagine Nicolas Cage. I don’t imagine the ant. The same thing goes for Julia Roberts. She reads her lines like the words were formed in a bowl of Alpha-Bits and has the emotional delivery of an aborted baby. She doesn’t have a good cartoon voice and not only does it not translate well here, it’s also going to be Charlotte’s Web’s downfall when that movie is released later this year. This applies to all of the actors who were in this film, the only exceptions being Paul Giamatti and Bruce Campbell who seemed as if they were actually enjoying their parts and really getting into their characters.

Action wise, there are plenty of scenes where the ants are running from flies, hornets, frogs, humans and anyone associated with Sean Hannity. Except for two funny scenes (One involving a firecracker exploding) there is no originality in the jokes or even any attempt at more visual insect humor. The movie is also very loud and gives you the impression that insects have Bose speakers strapped on their backs.

In the end, while a child may enjoy the simplified story and animation they’re used to seeing on Cartoon Network, it doesn’t change the fact that The Ant Bully is a typical run of the mill cartoon. Once you see it, you’ll forget about it two seconds later. Kind of like when you kill an ant.

Got a problem pal? E-mail me: george@latinoreview.com