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Review #203 of 365
Film: The Ant Bully IMAX-3D [PG] 88 minutes
WIP™ Scale: (1st viewing $11.25 + 2nd viewing $11.75 )/2 = $11.50
Where Viewed: UA Colorado Center 9 & IMAX, Denver, CO
When 2nd Seen: 2 August 2006
Time: 1:45 p.m.
Review Dedicated to: Billy S. of DePere, WI – my first childhood bully
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Click for 'Review Lite' [a 150-word or less review of this film]
As promised, I saw the IMAX®-3D version of The Ant Bully yesterday. For a review that offers no spoilers, please read no further and see the first review only.
This follow-up review will focus on two areas: first the value of the 3D effects and second part, as promised in the previous review, will be called Ant Bully Science.
This follow-up review will focus on two areas: first the value of the 3D effects and second part, as promised in the previous review, will be called Ant Bully Science.
IMAX®-3D The Ant Bully
Right off the bug, there's one word that comes to mind. Insectable! Absolutely out of this niche, the IMAX®-3D version of The Ant Bully is one of the best 3D-animated films of all times. While the level of realism is lower than found in Monster House Real 3D, there is never a moment when you don't feel as though you are inside the movie. Moreover, there are so many things that you just cannot see well in the 2D version. In fact, the level of details from Lucas's toes to the designs on the ants' exoskeletons is unbelievable. The animators and computers have done an amazing, antimated job on this film.
W.I.P. impact: + $2 for IMAX®-3D versionOf course, the price at the box office is higher—like $13 for the matinee. So was it worth it? Absolutely. You've never seen anything like this, and you are going to wonder why they don't make all CGI animated films in 3D. Just to give you an idea of some of the things I missed, in the 2D version, I did not notice that the floor of the chamber of elders where Lucas first meets the queen is actually a pocket watch. The eyes of the ants literally shimmer with depth and color in this version. Also, while the computers do a fantastic job of giving the zillions of polygons used to render each object a three-dimensional feel using perspective and lighting tricks, in this version you actually see depth. You can see the distance between the lens in Lucas's glasses and his eyes.
Same goes for when grandma is looking through the binoculars at recently reduced Lucas. The scene where he is shrunken and then slides down the wrinkles in the sheets into a bag of potato chips will blow your mind with how fun it is and how amazingly they animated it. It just keeps getting better and better from there on. So, absolutely it's worth it. If you haven't seen The Ant Bully, and you plan to, then go ahead and spend the extra money on the IMAX®-3D version, it's well worth every penny.
The Ant Bully Science
As a long-time science teacher who used to loathe having to get my students to unlearn so much erroneous information they pick up from television shows especially cartoons. I loved the Flintstones as much as the next person, but dinosaurs and human beings (Homo sapiens) never existed at the same time on earth. In fact their paths were not even close with millions of years between them. I know I shouldn't let it bug me (and no, that is not supposed to be a pun because we are talking ant science here, and ants are insects not bugs), because cartoons are cartoons. They aren't supposed to be thought of as real. I mean, kids know that animals cannot talk or that Coyotes cannot really set up elaborate Acme traps to catch the Roadrunner, don't they? The funny thing is, that unfortunately, they really cannot.
W.I.P. impact -$1.50 for unnecessary scientific inaccuracies
I know, I know, movies are supposed to be fun, and they are not supposed to be taken literally. The problem is that kids are impressionable, and they can learn a lot of misinformation from movies. It's pretty easy for kids to realize that real animals they know don't talk, but they have no way of really knowing whether any of the rest of the behavior or morphology of the animals in movies is factually correct or not. I would just like to see a teeny bit more attention paid to this by writers of children's books and animators and directors of children's movies. Thousands of people protested and countries even banned The DaVinci Code because it cast doubts on certain things people hold to be religious facts, but no body ever says boo if there are huge scientific inaccuracies in movies. So, let me go where no one has gone before.
Certain things just stick with them. So, for me, I have a difficult time wondering why writers, directors, and animators would go to the trouble to make any aspect of the ants correct to form, if they were going to dismiss so much else and even invent massive erroneous parts of their behavior. For example, they make a huge point when Lucas asks Hova to cross her heart that she draws the X over her abdomen. Actually, ants do not have a heart, not in their abdomen not in their chest region, nowhere. Hearts and blood vessels didn't evolve until much later with the first hearts actually evolving in the Annelids (segmented worms). Even so, why go to all that trouble with the heart crossing when they decided to give the ants teeth and eyelids and irises and pupils? Ants, of course, like all other insects, have compound eyes. Oh, I'm not trying to bee (now that pun is intended because, actually, bees and ants are close relatives) mean, I am just trying to understand the logic. Aside from ant anatomy and morphology problems (like their bony-looking mandibles, for another example), there is so much erroneous information given about ant behavior in this film as to get even the most recently graduated PhD in entomology all riled up. As most 6th graders know, ants do not have boy and girl friends. Only the queen reproduces, all the other ants except the males who mate with her, are sterile, and in fact, are female. There would be no male scout ant like Fugax or wizard ant like Zoc or even male council of elder ants. While there are countless other things, there is one more, I think really important thing to mention. Because we almost never see insects except in their adult form, most people never think about the fact that all insects, not just butterflies, go through a metamorphosis from egg, to larvae, to pupae, to adult.
Just as the caterpillar (the larval stage of a butterfly's life cycle) looks nothing like the adult, the same is true for ants. Therefore, the entire sequence where Kreela is teaching the little ants how to forage for the sweet rock so that Lucas can learn to be more ant-like, is simply outlandishly wrong. There are little kid ants, but they are legless and virtually helpless little creatures. After their pupal stage, they emerge looking just like an adult. They do not grow from a little ant into a big adult ant, in other words. Now the reason I pick on these aspects of scientific inaccuracy in a fantastic film is that I can see no reason why the same movie could not have been made just as well while sticking to a closer approximation of true ant anatomy and behavior. There was no need for there to be amorous behavior between Zoc and Hova. There was no reason all of the worker ants couldn't have been female. If Lucas really was the nerdy, smart kid the film makes him out to be, he probably would have known that ants don't have hearts and never asked Hova to cross hers. He might have asked her to cross her antennae instead. There was no reason to make the ants in the team competition to teach Lucas about being a team member needed to be little kid ants, as ants emerge in many species from their pupal stage, they learn and change castes throughout their lives of 50-60 days. There are even some known examples of ants teaching other members of the colony. So, this could have been done with newly emerged adults just as well. Some of these simple things could have been done to help kids learn true scientific facts. I bet you that if you give kids in 2nd through 5th grades a quiz two years from now and asked them where the heart is in an ant, they will say in it's butt. Lastly, it might seem a minor point now in context, but the Queen ant nearly always tears off her own wings after she lands after the mating night. There will be no reason for her to need them.
She only uses them that night of nuptial mating so that she can spread herself far and wide from other colonies.
W.I.P. impact -$1.50 for unnecessary scientific inaccuracies
I know, I know, movies are supposed to be fun, and they are not supposed to be taken literally. The problem is that kids are impressionable, and they can learn a lot of misinformation from movies. It's pretty easy for kids to realize that real animals they know don't talk, but they have no way of really knowing whether any of the rest of the behavior or morphology of the animals in movies is factually correct or not. I would just like to see a teeny bit more attention paid to this by writers of children's books and animators and directors of children's movies. Thousands of people protested and countries even banned The DaVinci Code because it cast doubts on certain things people hold to be religious facts, but no body ever says boo if there are huge scientific inaccuracies in movies. So, let me go where no one has gone before.
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Review-lite [150-word cap]
The Ant Bully has a good moral but at a heavy price. The basic premise of the film involves Lucas Nickle being bullied routinely by an obnoxious kid in his own front yard. When the bully finally leaves him alone, Lucas's anger wells up, and he takes it out on a defenseless ant colony. The wizard ant whips up a potion to shrink him down to ant size so that Lucas will see life from an ant's perspective and realize all that is wrong with the way he deals with his own problems by taking it out on others. The animation was terrific, but not as sophisticated as Monster House or Cars. The voice actors were very good, and the story is full of treats. Had the writers realized some of the shortcomings in their script and eliminated them, the film would have all the elements of a children's classic.
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