Dir. John A. Davis, US, 2006, 89 mins
Cast: Nicholas Cage, Julia Roberts, Meryl Streep
Review by Carol Allen
With this one it is back to the nineties world of "bugs with celebrity voices" as in Antz and A Bug's Life. But that's ok. The animation is attractive and imaginative, it has some strongly drawn characters in both senses of the word, good visual gags and a decent, morally valid story – be tolerant and co-operate you little blighters or else! Although I must say it seems odd in an American film to hear the ant colony's alchemist Zoc (Cage) delivering a speech on his ideal of ant society, in which every member does his assigned task for the benefit of the group - "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need" or what? Maybe he's talking about corporate team loyalty though, rather than Marx.
The story concerns Lucas, a ten-year-old boy, Zach Tyler Eisen, who compensates for the bullying he receives at the hands of his peers by taking his rage out on the ant hill in his back yard, stamping on it and flooding it with water. To the ant colony living there he is known as the Destroyer and they are really fed up with him. Zoc then comes up with a magic potion, which shrinks Zach to the size of an ant, and they drag him down below to stand trial, where he is found guilty and sentenced by the Ant Queen (Streep) to live among the ants and learn their ways to earn his freedom.
The visualisation of the ant colony architecture is very impressive, as are the set pieces, particularly an attack on the colony by a swarm of wasps making like jet fighters and an encounter with a very scary frog, who has an eclectic appetite. And when shrunken Lucas takes his new found friends on a raid back into his world, the film makes imaginative use of the challenges involved, negotiating everyday objects from an ant point of view, culminating in an exciting life and death climactic battle with Stan Beals, the greasy bug exterminator (Paul Giamatti), who is out, well, to exterminate them. The voices merge well into the characters rather than dominating them. As well as Cage and Streep we have Roberts as Zoc's girlfriend, the gentle Nurse Ant Hova, who takes charge of Lucas's re-education and Regina King is her sassy best friend.
Despite its unashamed and biologically misleading anthropomorphism the film does have a potential educational content as far as the habits of the ant is concerned, although it doesn't always explain these things at all clearly. Were I taking an intelligent, inquisitive child to this movie, he/she would inevitably be asking lots of questions I couldn’t answer, like for example: what is the name of those creatures the ants keep in herds like we do cows and "milk" for their honeydew? I've since done my homework and discovered they are aphids.
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