The Ant Bully (film)

The Ant Bully
A minuscule boy stands in front of a group of anthropomorphic ants (and other assorted bugs) in a grass field, while an exterminator towers over them, swarmed by wasps, in the background.
Theatrical release poster
Directed byJohn A. Davis
Screenplay byJohn A. Davis
Based onThe Ant Bully
by John Nickle
Produced by
Starring
Edited byJon Price
Music byJohn Debney
Production
companies
Distributed byWarner Bros. Pictures[1][2]
Release date
  • July 28, 2006 (2006-07-28)
Running time
89 minutes[3]
CountryUnited States[1][2]
LanguageEnglish
Budget$45–50 million[4][5]
Box office$55.2 million[5]

The Ant Bully is a 2006 American animated fantasy comedy film loosely based on the children's book of the same name. Written and directed by John A. Davis, it tells the story of Lucas Nickle, a young boy who, after terrorizing a colony of ants, is shrunken and ordered to work amongst them. It stars the voices of Julia Roberts, Nicolas Cage, Meryl Streep, Paul Giamatti, Regina King, Bruce Campbell, Lily Tomlin, and Zach Tyler Eisen.

The Ant Bully was theatrically released on July 28, 2006, by Warner Bros. Pictures in the United States. It received mixed reviews and was a box-office failure, grossing $55 million on a budget of $50 million. As a result of the film's poor performance, DNA Productions underwent several layoffs before it shut down the same year. The Ant Bully marked Ricardo Montalbán's final film role before he died in 2009.

Plot

Lucas Nickle, a 10-year-old boy, is left with his older sister Tiffany and alien-obsessed grandmother when his parents go on vacation to Puerto Vallarta. Neglected by his family and tormented by a local bully named Steve, Lucas frequently vents his frustration by attacking an anthill in his front yard. Zoc, an eccentric sorcerer ant, wants to fight back, while Hova, a nurse ant who is fascinated by humans, wishes to communicate with Lucas. The leaders of the colony decide to shrink Lucas down to ant size using a potion Zoc created.

The local exterminator, Stan Beals, manipulates Lucas into signing a contract for his services, claiming that Lucas' father authorized the extermination but forgot to sign the paperwork himself. That night, Zoc administers the shrinking potion into Lucas' ear while he sleeps. Now miniaturized, Lucas is carried to the anthill and put on trial; the Queen sentences him to hard labor. Hova volunteers to train Lucas, aided by her friends Kreela and Fugax. When the ants are attacked by wasps, Lucas uses a discarded firecracker to repel them, earning the respect of all but Zoc.

Lucas is shown a painting of the “Cloud-Breather”, an ominous figure who heralds death. Recognizing the Cloud-Breather as Beals, Lucas convinces Hova, Fugax, and Kreela to visit his house; there, he attempts to phone Beals and terminate the contract, but unknowingly calls a pizza restaurant instead. Upon their return, Zoc intimidates Lucas into running away. They end up both getting swallowed by a frog, and finally begin to bond after freeing themselves.

The following day, Beals arrives to exterminate the colony, and Lucas and Zoc enlist the wasps' aid. During the final battle, Lucas saves the lives of Hova and an injured wasp. As Beals prepares to douse the anthill with pesticide, a beetle and a glowworm bite him in the testicles, causing him to double over in pain. Seizing the opportunity, Lucas, Zoc, and Hova inject Beals with the shrinking potion, severely disfiguring him. Beals flees on a tricycle while being chased away by the wasps.

The Queen declares Lucas an honorary ant for his heroism, naming him "Rokai", and the rest of the ants return Lucas to his normal size. Lucas drives Steve away by rallying his cronies against him. Before leaving with them, Lucas gives the colony jellybeans.

Voice cast

Main voice cast

  • Julia Roberts as Hova, a nurse ant who becomes a mentor to Lucas
  • Nicolas Cage as Zoc, a wizard ant and Hova's boyfriend who distrusts Lucas
  • Meryl Streep as the Queen Ant, the leader of the Ant colony
  • Paul Giamatti as Stan Beals, a cigar-smoking local exterminator
  • Zach Tyler Eisen as Lucas "Peanut" Nickle, a 10-year-old boy whom the ants shrink to teach him a lesson in being kind to them.
  • Regina King as Kreela, a forager ant and one of Hova's friends
  • Bruce Campbell as Fugax, a scout ant and another one of Hova's friends
  • Lily Tomlin as Mommo, Lucas' grandmother
  • Cheri Oteri as Doreen Nickle, Lucas' mother
  • Larry Miller as Fred Nickle, Lucas' father
  • Allison Mack as Tiffany Nickle, Lucas' older sister
  • Ricardo Montalbán as the Head of Council
  • Myles Jeffrey as Steve, a 15-year-old boy who bullies Lucas
  • Jake T. Austin as Nicky, a neighborhood boy and Steve's former sidekick
  • Rob Paulsen as Beetle, a friendly green and purple beetle with feathery antennae
  • S. Scott Bullock as Glow Worm
  • Mark DeCarlo as Fly, an unnamed fly who is swallowed by a frog
  • Frank Welker as Spindle, Frog, and Caterpillar

Additional voice cast

Production

Tom Hanks originally conceived the idea for an animated film adaptation of The Ant Bully after reading the book with his child. He then sent a copy to John A. Davis, due to Davis' work on the animated film Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius (2001).[6] 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."[7]

Hanks agreed that the story could be expanded considerably. Keith Alcorn, DNA Productions co-founder and one of the film's executive producers, had a similar initial reaction to the project as Davis did, recalling "My first thought was, 'not another ant movie.' But looking at the actual story, this was really about a little boy and how he learns about the world by having to live beneath the surface."[8]

The film was rendered on DNA Productions' 1400-CPU render farm, managed by the open-source Sun Grid Engine job scheduler. The AMD Opteron nodes started out with Fedora Core 2 Linux with a modern 2.6.x kernel, but later updated to Fedora Core 4. Most of the applications are commercial, including Maya, Lightwave 3D, Houdini, Massive and Pixar’s RenderMan.[9]

Along with the theatrical release of The Ant Bully, an IMAX 3D version was 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 three dimensions with IMAX DMR. Critics within the 3D motion-picture community have given the film high marks as, unlike Superman Returns released the same year, the entire film is projected in 3D stereo. The process of turning a pure animation film into 3D is much simpler than converting a film with live actors. Some of the production took place at C.O.R.E. Digital Pictures in Canada.

Music

The Ant Bully (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)
Film score by
John Debney
ReleasedAugust 1, 2006
Recorded2006
GenreFilm Score
Length57:05
LabelVarèse Sarabande
ProducerJohn Debney
John Debney chronology
Chicken Little
(2005) 		The Ant Bully (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)
(2006) 		Barnyard
(2006)
Professional ratings
Review scores
SourceRating
AllMusicStarStarStarHalf star[10]

The Ant Bully (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) is the soundtrack album for the film. The score was composed and conducted by John Debney, who previously worked with Davis on Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius, and performed by the Hollywood Studio Symphony. It was released on August 1, 2006, by Varèse Sarabande.

Track listing

No.TitleLength
1."Parade Of Ants"1:02
2."Destroyer"2:05
3."Sad Lucas"0:59
4."Zac Attempts Potion"1:43
5."Head Of Council"1:07
6."Parents Leave On Trip"0:41
7."Zac Makes Potion"0:56
8."Colony Floods"0:47
9."Colony Destroyed"1:27
10."Mommo Awakens"2:05
11."The Queen"2:11
12."Team Competition"2:47
13."Wasp Attack"3:58
14."Honeydew Feast"2:25
15."The Ant Mother"2:25
16."Sneaking Home"1:20
17."Hang Gliding"2:01
18."Jellybeans"1:23
19."Frog Attack"2:15
20."Zac And Lucas"2:17
21."Exterminator Arrives"3:02
22."Asking For Wasp Help"1:37
23."Launching The Attack"1:47
24."Assault On Stan"6:05
25."Lucas Gets Named"2:12
26."Home Coming"1:13
27."Bullies And Sweet Rock"4:59
Total length:57:05

Release and reception

The Ant Bully was theatrically released on July 28, 2006, by Warner Bros. Pictures. It was later released on DVD and Blu-ray on November 28, 2006, by Warner Home Video.

Box office

The film opened at number five on July 28, 2006, and closed on November 16, 2006, with $28 million in North America and a total of $55 million worldwide. The estimated production budget was $50 million.[11] The film was released in the United Kingdom on August 4, 2006, and opened at number eight.[12]

Critical response

Review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes reported a 61% approval rating, based on 116 reviews, with an average rating of 6.2/10. The website's consensus reads, "Sometimes inventive and witty, this animated adventure into an ant-sized world is a pleasant diversion."[13] On Metacritic, the film has a score of 59/100 based on 26 reviews, indicating "mixed or average reviews".[14] Audiences surveyed by CinemaScore gave the film a grade "A−" on a scale of A to F.[15]

Tom Long of The Detroit News wrote, "there's a sweet simplicity and humility to this film."[16]

Ruthe Stein of The San Francisco Chronicle wrote that "the brilliance of The Ant Bully is in the crafty way it delves into the minds of ants as they plot to save themselves from extermination...Davis creates a marvelously labyrinthine society for them, right below the surface of a bland suburb."[17]

Lisa Schwarzbaum of Entertainment Weekly liked Roberts and Cage in their roles, and referred to Streep's queen ant as "excellently magisterial". She also wrote that "the kind of life lessons that usually gum up the fun go down as easily as jelly beans in The Ant Bully."[18] Jeffrey E. McCants of the Minneapolis Star Tribune wrote that "the film's heavy-handed lessons turn it from a fun romp through a cartoonish insect world to a predictable and preachy snoozefest".[19]

Bill Muller of The Arizona Republic wrote, "The Ant Bully, in trying to match Antz or A Bug's Life, just digs itself into a big hole."[20]

Jack Mathews of the New York Daily News was positive about the film's lack of pop-culture references and thought that the film does not "talk down" to children. Additionally, he noted, "adults may be amused (or maybe not) by the Christian parallel in the ants' religion."[21]

Video game

Main article: The Ant Bully (video game)

Games publisher Midway released The Ant Bully, the official video game tie-in to the film on GameCube, PlayStation 2, Microsoft Windows, and Game Boy Advance on July 24, 2006. A Wii version was released on December 5, 2006. The game was developed by the Montreal Studio Artificial Mind and Movement.

See also

References

  1. ^ a b c d e "The Ant Bully (2006)". British Film Institute. Retrieved March 29, 2026.
  2. ^ a b "The Ant Bully (2006)". AFI Catalog of Feature Films. American Film Institute. Retrieved March 29, 2026.
  3. ^ "The Ant Bully (U)". British Board of Film Classification. Retrieved March 29, 2026.
  4. ^ "The Ant Bully". The Numbers. Nash Information Services, LLC. Retrieved March 29, 2026.
  5. ^ a b "The Ant Bully". Box Office Mojo. IMDb. Retrieved May 15, 2020.
  6. ^ "Hanks and Davis on The Ant Bully". Comingsoon.net. July 27, 2006. Archived from the original on August 6, 2006.
  7. ^ Jenny Donelan, Computer Graphics World, September 2002, Volume 29 Number 9, pages 24–26
  8. ^ John Cawley, Animation World Magazine, [1] Archived December 5, 2008, at the Wayback Machine, July 28, 2006
  9. ^ Dagdigian, Chris. "Making movies with Grid Engine". Grid Engine. Archived from the original on December 14, 2006. Retrieved June 18, 2018.
  10. ^ Phares, Heather. John Debney: The Ant Bully > Review at AllMusic. Retrieved October 5, 2014.
  11. ^ "Weekend Box Office Actuals (U.S.) Aug 4 - 6 weekend"
  12. ^ "Weekend box office 4th August 2006 - 6th August 2006". www.25thframe.co.uk. Retrieved March 30, 2017.
  13. ^ "The Ant Bully (2006)". Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved March 20, 2025.
  14. ^ "The Ant Bully". Metacritic.
  15. ^ "Cinemascore". Archived from the original on December 20, 2018.
  16. ^ "The Ant Bully - Movie Reviews". Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved February 20, 2025.
  17. ^ Stein, Ruthe (July 28, 2006). "Ants show shrunken bully who's the boss". San Francisco Chronicle. Archived from the original on April 10, 2023. Retrieved February 20, 2025.
  18. ^ Schwarzbaum, Lisa (January 18, 2007). "The Ant Bully | Movie Review". Entertainment Weekly. Archived from the original on January 18, 2007.
  19. ^ McCants, Jeffery E. (July 28, 2006). "Heavy preaching from a 'Bully' pulpit". Star Tribune. Minneapolis, Minnesota. p. F11. Retrieved February 20, 2025 – via Newspapers.com.
  20. ^ Muller, Bill (July 28, 2006). "More cartoon ants, but less buzz". The Arizona Republic. pp. P1, P7. Retrieved February 20, 2025 – via Newspapers.com.
  21. ^ Mathews, Jack (July 28, 2006). "Bully! for Small Wonders". New York Daily News. Retrieved February 20, 2025.
Wikiquote has quotations related to The Ant Bully (film).
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Additional terms may apply for the media files.