Firebeetle
Explorer
We are in a serious CGI animation glut folks. Within the last year or so we've had:
The Wild: Decent voices, OK writing, overall mediocre effort (mediocre film)
Hoodwinked: Funny writing, decent voices, TERRIBLE animation (bad film)
Doogal: Wretched and horrible writing, great voices with no good lines, good animation but horrid direction (horrible film)
Cars (good movie!) is still out there, Barnyard (WTF??) is starting next week, and then there's:
The Ant Bully
I loved it. I really loved. I would actually see it again, without the kids even. It's good.
Lucas is a bullied kid who takes his angst out on a local ant colony. Little does he know the ants are a sentient, anthropomorphic civilization who wield magic and manage to shrink "The Destroyer" to their level. At the edict of their goddess-like queen, Lucas is raised as an ant and must save the colony from the dreaded horror of the very exterminator he was conned into hiring. That's the plot in a nutshell.
This is a movie that, instead of making every effort to parody modern life, manages to take itself seriously. The ants are shown having a very real culture and civilization, not just "the queen decides everything" sort of deal. The ants' world is really given from their point of view and it doesn't seem hokey or contrived. You could actually make an RPG setting out of it! (classes: Wizard, Scout, Forager, Regurgitator (maybe not that last one.))
It's a bit unpredictable! I honestly didn't see a couple of things coming. For a kid's movie, that's pretty rare. I like the moral, it doesn't insult my intelligence. It's as short as a lot of modern kid's fare, but it doesn't feel like it ran out of story half an hour before the end. Finally, the voice acting is terrific. Julia Roberts, Nicholas Cage, Ricardo Montablan, and most of all BRUCE CAMPBELL! Yeah Bruce, you work it man!
I have to recommend going to see this movie. Let me know what you think.
The Wild: Decent voices, OK writing, overall mediocre effort (mediocre film)
Hoodwinked: Funny writing, decent voices, TERRIBLE animation (bad film)
Doogal: Wretched and horrible writing, great voices with no good lines, good animation but horrid direction (horrible film)
Cars (good movie!) is still out there, Barnyard (WTF??) is starting next week, and then there's:
The Ant Bully
I loved it. I really loved. I would actually see it again, without the kids even. It's good.
Lucas is a bullied kid who takes his angst out on a local ant colony. Little does he know the ants are a sentient, anthropomorphic civilization who wield magic and manage to shrink "The Destroyer" to their level. At the edict of their goddess-like queen, Lucas is raised as an ant and must save the colony from the dreaded horror of the very exterminator he was conned into hiring. That's the plot in a nutshell.
This is a movie that, instead of making every effort to parody modern life, manages to take itself seriously. The ants are shown having a very real culture and civilization, not just "the queen decides everything" sort of deal. The ants' world is really given from their point of view and it doesn't seem hokey or contrived. You could actually make an RPG setting out of it! (classes: Wizard, Scout, Forager, Regurgitator (maybe not that last one.))
It's a bit unpredictable! I honestly didn't see a couple of things coming. For a kid's movie, that's pretty rare. I like the moral, it doesn't insult my intelligence. It's as short as a lot of modern kid's fare, but it doesn't feel like it ran out of story half an hour before the end. Finally, the voice acting is terrific. Julia Roberts, Nicholas Cage, Ricardo Montablan, and most of all BRUCE CAMPBELL! Yeah Bruce, you work it man!
I have to recommend going to see this movie. Let me know what you think.
