The Ant Bully

"The Ant Bully isn't insultingly bad, but it did really remind me, we definitely don't need any more ant movies."

- PhantomStrider

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 mh:greatestmovies:Legendary Pictures in their first (and so far, only) animated movie. The movie included the voices role of Zach Tyler Eisen, Julia Roberts, Nicolas Cage, Meryl Streep, Paul Giamatti, Bruce Campbell, and Regina King. 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.

Plot
Tired of weathering constant attacks on their colony, ants shrink a destructive boy, named Lucas (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 (Julia Roberts, Regina King, Bruce Campbell), Lucas discovers a world he never knew existed and soon joins forces with his new friends to combat an exterminator (Paul Giamatti) who threatens their colony.

Bad Qualities

 * 1) The biggest main problem with the movie adaptation of the book is that there is no reason for it to exist and extremely poor grasp to the book of the source material it is based on.
 * 2) *Stan Beals was never seen nor mentioned in the book.
 * 3) *In the book, Lucas Nickle wears a glasses and "a strange hat", but while he does wear glasses in the movie, he doesn't have any hat. In fact, he looks nothing like his book counterpart.
 * 4) *In the book, Lucas' bully was named Sid, but in the movie, he's renamed to Steve.
 * 5) *Lucas' parents go on their wedding anniversary to Puerto Vallerta for Mexican beach resort city in the film, but they never went away in the book.
 * 6) On the topic of Stan Beals, he is a weak, porrly written and uninteresting villain who is not much of a threat except for the insects. Also despite being main antagonist, he doesn't have that much more amount of screen time, since he only appeared at the beginning and the climax.
 * 7) *Just like The Lorax with O'Hare and Mars Needs Moms with the Supervisor, he is only in the movie so that the producers can make a movie about the book.
 * 8) One of the main protagonist, Lucas Nickle (Zack Tyler Eisen's character), is rather unlikable, annoying, selfish, bratty, whiny and irritating for the most part. Even though he was never very cruel, heartbreaking line to his mother and learned the lesson, it was too late to have him character development. In fact, he played far more the typical brat and considered rip-off of Milo from Mars Needs Moms (which is released 5 years later), since both share the same problem. His screams feels irritating, forced and poor, notably when Zoc and other ants kidnapped him to the ant hill after he see Zoc in fount of glasses, standing on potato chips (this actually happens since he is tiny and naked after he see underwear in bed).
 * 9) The movie also features a voice role from Allison Mack in which she voices Lucas's older sister Tiffany Nickle, which did not age well following her sexual abuse allegations involving NXIVM following the MeToo and Time's Up movement and the Harvey Weinstein sexual abuse allegations 11 years after the film's release.
 * 10) Unimpressive, sub-par and uninspiring animation, especially for mid-2000s standards. This is also unacceptable, considering the creator's previous film, Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius, looked way better than this. Not only that, the human characters designs looks slightly uneven and uncanny.
 * 11) Atrocious and laughably bad dialogue that sounds like if it was written by a four-year old, such as "Human... Come with us!" and "What you gonna do about it, ants? Nothing. 'Cause I'm big, and you're small."
 * 12) Every humor is much unfunny, juvenile, weak, repetitive, countless and cringeworthy (in a movie for kids, by the way as PG-rated film (or G-rated in Australia), including but not limited to:
 * 13) *Stan Beals mocking Lucas for thinking he shouldn't sign the contract paper for exterminating ants.
 * 14) *The ants celebrating their victory for defeating Stan Beals with bug poop.
 * 15) *Stan Beals getting his crouch bitten by a wasp during the final battle.
 * 16) *Some butt shots of Lucas. For example, once the tiny Lucas is landed to chips, you can pause that he is naked, which is really 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.
 * 17) **Not only that, there are some butt shots of other characters too.
 * 18) Massive pointless amounts of filler and useless padding; in fact, the movie spends eighty-eight minutes of Lucas and the ants doing stuff that is unnecessary and unneeded.
 * 19) Zoc (Nicholas Cage's character) is an absolute insult to wizardry and witchcraft, and he is a massive jerk towards to Lucas throughout the movie and went overused of having angry issues and hatred to human, 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. This also caused Hova being angry toward at him.
 * 20) In fact, most ants (except Hova and maybe Fugax and Kreela) treat Lucas, since he flood the ant colony, like Steve does, which makes Lucas have the pointless "Butt-Monkey" role in this film.
 * 21) Awful, weak and rushed climax. Stan Beals is defeated by... tarantula hawk for Lucas and other ants, who inject the shrinking potion onto Stan's rear end, misshaping the bug exterminator. A large swarm of wasps come 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. As the result, it was too faster pacing, poorly done and very forgettable.
 * 22) It was pretty much the reason why plans for a fourth season of Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius were effectively cancelled, as the lackluster performance of this film led to the closure of DNA Productions in 2006.
 * 23) The romance sub-plot between with Zoc and Hova were pointless as it is hard to take at all.
 * 24) It overused of many pop-culture references, such as Them!, The Empire Strikes Back, mh:greatestmovies:E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial and mh:greatestmovies:Terminator 2: Judgment Day.
 * 25) Features of overused too many clichés, such as "main character gets bullied for being different".
 * 26) The premise of human becoming ant, after begin shrank in size is interesting, but the execution is really bad that no one can save it.
 * 27) False advertising: The marking poster, DVD cover and promotion image shows that Lucas Nickle is actually using a weapon, yet he doesn't use it in reality whatsoever!
 * 28) *Also, Hova is holding the baby ant in posters, but she doesn't holding it, since every female ants that isn't Hova is holding it in the movie as well.
 * 29) The story is really 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.
 * 30) This movie is extremely mean-spirited. Lucas got tortured by a local bully named Steve and his friends, which caused Lucas to takes out his frustration on an anthill and attacks it with a squirt gun, terrifying the colony, where Zoc decided to shrink him by pour the potion into his ear for the potion, who succeeded happened by doing to bangs the fire crystals against each other.

Good Qualities

 * 1) The voice acting is decent, especially Nicholas Cage as Zoc, Julia Roberts as Hova, Zack Tyler Eisen as Lucas, Meryl Streep as the Ant Queen, Paul Giamatti as Stan Beals, Regina King as Kreela and Bruce Campbell as Fugax.
 * 2) Some funny moments.
 * 3) Decent soundtrack from John Debney.
 * 4) Despite the awful climax, it is pretty entertaining.
 * 5) The scene where Lucas' bully, Steve gets owned is better than Stan Beals' defeat by getting his body shrinked.
 * 6) The scene where Hova calls out Zoc for chasing Lucas away is very satisfying.
 * 7) 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 looked from an ants point of view.
 * 8) Hova (Julia Roberts' character) is much likable character. In fact, she doesn't threat Lucas, unlike most ants, especially Zoc, who is easily hatred and angry issues.

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 user score of 5.6 for Metacritic. Audiences surveyed by CinemaScore gave the film a grade "A-" on scale of A to F. The film earned score of 5.8/10 on IMDb. On Letterboxd, the film has a rating of 2.1/5, becoming the 3rd lowest film produced by Legendary Pictures.

Box office
The Ant Bully made $28.1 million in North America and $27.1 million in overseas, and a total of $55.2 million worldwide against a $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.

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Trivia

 * It was the last film performance for Ricardo Montalbán though he made guest appearances on both Family Guy and American Dad! as well as Disney's Kim Possible before his death on January 14, 2009.
 * 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 to turn 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 the other bug movies. It's a completely different story."
 * In Zoc's chant to create the potion, he says the dialogue "Wind that blows, Rain that falls and Fire that Burns"; this is a reference to the film "The Fifth Element" in which Leeloo (The Fifth Element) says "Wind blows, Rain Falls, Fire Burns" as a clue to activate the element stones.
 * The movie was rendered on DNA Productions' 1400-CPU render farm, managed by the open source Sun Grid Engine job scheduler. The nodes started out 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 Ants, living in a matriarchal society, have a matriarchal religion, and worship the Mother. Lucas becomes so well-assimilated that by the end of the film he is also saying "Praise the Mother!", as well as picking up on some of Ants' swear words.
 * 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.