Ant Bully: Communist agitprop for kids?


Is a new kids movie subversive fiction? One reviewer says yes
Okay, I haven't seen The Ant Bully. I did see a couple of previews, and it didn't strike me as a "must see."

But this review caught my eye.

Yeah. See. I ain’t making this shit up. Zoc falls just short of saying “Everyone open your little red books and follow along on page 57.” This is gonna play really well in China. And North Korea? Kim Jong Il is gonna flip for this. Of course, that demented little dwarf will no doubt see himself as the wise and benevolent Ant Queen. I can just picture him now, running around his palace with a pair of nylon wings singing “I am the great Communist Ant Queen! Come little ants, come!”

But why stop there when we can have a climax with the battle of the Ants versus the Great Capitalist Satan! Enter Godzilla Paul Giamatti as Stan of Bealz-a-Bug Extermination. No subtlety there. A man so greedy and evil he talks a kid into signing an extermination contract while his parents are on vacation. This is a man that thinks only of money and destruction. And he revels in both. And it’s up to our hero Lucas, his new ant friends and scores of once menacing wasps to work together to stop the great chemical weapon spewing imperialist from his ethnic cleansing and drive him back so that all the lawn can live in peace and prosperity.

Are the kids gonna get all this? Oh, probably not. But the parents sure will. Hell, if the Right Wing talk shows can be all a buzz with chatter about anti-American themes in Superman, then this is gonna give them a case of spastic colon the likes of which we’ve never seen. If they thought Hollywood was liberal before, just wait until they sink their teeth into this little bevy of propaganda.

But is it entertaining? Meh. Watching this strange choice of a theme for a kids film was pretty much the most entertaining part of it. It really gets pretty paint by numbers storywise, and gets so incredibly heavy handed with its themes that it becomes laughable. I mean, the film opens with Lucas getting a power wedgie from a local bully who says “There’s nothing you can do about it – BECAUSE I’M BIG AND YOU’RE SMALL. You get it? I’M BIG AND YOU’RE SMALL.” Yes, he repeats it. Just in case the kids missed it the first time. So what does our hero do? He goes to mow down the ant mound chanting “There’s nothing you can do, because I’m big and you’re small.” Gee, I wonder if that idea is going to be important later…HEY it is!

If he's right and The Ant Bully does take this route, I'd love to know who greenlighted it.

I wonder if kids would choose to see this on their own.

I think the free market can stand on it's own. Especially since it is the thing that makes Hollywood possible. No matter what may be said at cocktail parties, somebody is watching the cash very closely.

— NeoWayland

Posted: Wed - July 26, 2006 at 04:40 AM  Tag


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