With a title like The Ant Bully, I had the sneaking suspicion that the filmmakers were trying to make me hate the movie before I even saw it. Hoping to be proven wrong, I purchased my ticket, picked up my usual drink at the concession stand, and sat down in a practically vacant theater that was filled by only two other small families. (Not a good sign for an animated "blockbuster" the studio has been hyping for almost a year with an obnoxious teaser trailer.) The lights dimmed, the film began, and sadly, my hatred grew far greater than just the title alone as it went along. With a concept that cries out for imagination, but offers very little to none, the only question parents should ask themselves in debating whether to take their kids to The Ant Bully is why bother when the vastly superior Monster House is probably playing in the same building?

Young Lucas Nickle (voice by Zach Tyler Eisen) is a boy picked on by bullies, and embarrassed by his overly doting parents who treat him like a baby. Since he has no one to vent his frustrations on, Lucas decides to take out his anger on an ant hill in his front yard, drowning them with a hose. The ant colony decides they've had enough punishment from "Lucas the Destroyer", so they decide to send their wizard Zoc (Nicholas Cage) to the boy's house to shrink him with a magic potion he created. Lucas is kidnapped and taken to the ant's world, where he's placed on trial before the wise Ant Queen (Meryl Streep). Instead of the expected punishment of death, the benevolent Queen decides that Lucas must learn to become one of them and see the world through their eyes if he ever wants to be returned to normal. With the help of a kindly ant named Hova (Julia Roberts) and her friends, Lucas will learn the value of working as a team. And with a slimy exterminator (Paul Giamatti) due to arrive any day, Lucas will have to learn his lessons quickly, and gain the trust of the insects so that they can fight back together.

Despite a workable premise and some decent imagination, it seems that writer-director John A. Davis (Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius) used up all his energy in rounding up an A-list cast, and then pretty much stopped there. The Ant Bully starts out promisingly enough, especially in the design of the ants' world. Instead of having them merely be wise cracking insects, the opening moments hint at an almost fantasy world with wizards, ancient legends passed down over the centuries, magic, and prophecies. I liked this unique angle, and I also liked how a lot of the ants have almost this tribal-like paint displayed on their bodies. Unfortunately, after some tantalizing glimpses at this somewhat original angle, the movie all but drops it, and favors on focusing entirely on Lucas and his comic relief ant friends getting into one misadventure after another. We learn very little about the world of the ants, or of their ways. How did they master magic? How did their society come to be? What is the meaning of their tribal-like markings? The movie shows us these fascinating ideas, then decides to forget all about them, opting instead to "entertain" us with a series of scenes that almost seem to be lifted directly from 1989's Honey I Shrunk the Kids, as Lucas tries to deal with the world in his new smaller size.

More so than the lack of a strongly developed world, it is the characters and the third rate dialogue that ultimately sink The Ant Bully. The screenplay refuses to flesh out a single character, opting instead to either make them unfunny comic relief, or characters that just pop in and out when the screenplay sees fit. This kind of defeats the entire purpose of rounding up such an impressive cast. Why bother hiring Meryl Streep and Paul Giamatti if you're not even going to use them? Streep's Ant Queen is a pathetic cameo, with less than two minutes worth of dialogue in her entire role, and Giamatti as the evil exterminator gets maybe ten lines. (And I think that's being generous.) Of the big names in the cast, only Nicholas Cage and Julia Roberts get any sizeable role, and they are mostly forgettable, especially thanks to Cage's uninspired line readings. Making matters even worse are the number of uninspired and underdeveloped comic relief characters who are not only unfunny, but also annoying. Bruce Campbell and Regina King play a pair of ants who team up with Lucas during his adventure, but they serve little purpose to the story itself, other than to argue with each other. And legendary comic actress, Lily Tomlin, is sorely underused as the film's sole semi-amusing character - Lucas' grandmother who is paranoid about aliens, and uses her insane theories to explain her grandson's sudden disappearance.

With so little going for The Ant Bully, you have to look at the positives, even if they are outshined by the negatives. Aside from the world of the ants themselves, I generally liked the look of the film. It's not the best looking animated film to hit the screens this year, but it's got some interesting scenes, such as when Lucas takes his ant friends on a guided tour of his house by floating around on flower petals in the wind. Most of the film, however, is lacking excitement and meaning. Aside from the highly anticlimactic and disappointing battle between the ants and the evil exterminator, there is very little sense of danger or excitement in the story. There are some evil wasps who pop up in one scene, but they too are forgotten about as soon as they fly away, only to turn up again as allies so that they too can do battle with the villain. Instead of creating excitement, exploring the world of the ants, or creating memorable characters, the screenplay is content to waste scene after scene having the ants preaching to Lucas about teamwork and how he should respect others, even those smaller than him. The movie applies its moral with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer, and it eventually starts to become overbearing.

Without a single shred of inspiration or humor, The Ant Bully takes what could have been a cute movie for families, and turns it into something that is bound to be a chore for all but the youngest of children to sit through. How such an uninspired and sub par project attracted such strong talent (including Tom Hanks as head producer of the film) will forever be a mystery to me. It offers absolutely nothing in terms of entertainment value, and does not offer anything that other animated films haven't already done and done better. If it were not for the even more underwhelming Hoodwinked, this would definitely take the title of the worst animated feature of 2006 so far. The makers of The Ant Bully should thank their lucky stars that a decent look and some intriguing ideas help lift their effort to just slightly above worthless.

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