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The Ant Bully | 2006 | PG | - 2.4.1

A 10-year-old boy who is bullied by bigger neighborhood kids, becomes a bully himself when he takes his frustrations out on the anthill in his yard. An ant wizard in the colony is determined to teach the boy a lesson and develops a potion that shrinks the boy to ant size. Now he has to live among the ants before being able to return home. With the voices of Lily Tomlin, Larry Miller, Julia Roberts, Paul Giamatti and Zach Tyler Eisen. Directed by John A. Davis. [1:28]

SEX/NUDITY 2 - A boy wakes up after being miniaturized and we see him nude (we see his bare buttocks, back legs and abdomen; no frontal nudity is visible). A boy stands nude in another scene and his bare back, legs and buttocks are visible. A man bends over and his pants slip down to reveal his bare back and buttock cleavage. A young woman wears short tops that reveal her bare abdomen.
 A male ant tells a female ant, "You find me attractive," and tries to flirt with her. A young woman dances and swings her hips.
 A husband and wife leave on a trip for their anniversary and the husband makes a remark about spending some time alone with his wife. Ants make a comment about humans hiding their "gender traits." A female ant asks a miniaturized boy how humans tell the difference between male and female, and as the boy is changing, the ant sees him nude and says, "Oh, is that how?"

VIOLENCE/GORE 4 - A young woman with a telephone tries to squish an ant, it runs and manages to dodge the phone (its leg is broken, though).
 A wasp corners a miniaturized boy, it tries to sting the boy repeatedly and comes very close to getting him, but the boy lights a firecracker, it explodes and the wasp is killed. A wasp corners an ant, then picks it up and carries it away (it is dropped later and is OK).
 A huge frog rises up out of a body of water and snaps a beetle up in its tongue; then tries to snap a miniaturized boy and three ants up, they run, the frog chases them, and the ants get away but the boy is caught. A miniaturized boy lands in the stomach of a frog and floats in the gooey fluid where two other insects are wading, and one picks up the severed head of another insect (they are all burped out of the frog shortly after that).
 Wasps attack ants and a miniaturized boy: The ants shoot goo at the wasps, some are struck and fall to the ground, ants run and scream, and the wasps try to sting them, (the wasps have large beak-like jaws with points in them and they speak in deep voices). A man is stung in the genitals by an insect, and then stung again by a wasp.
 A man sprays a fog of exterminating chemicals and we see insects falling to the ground dead; the man smacks two insects and they land in a birdbath, and two others are knocked into hanging wind chimes. A man with a lit cigar burns a fly as it flies, and then squishes another fly that lands on his cheek. A boy shoots a water gun at an anthill, ants pour out of the top of the hill, the boy kicks the top off the hill and many ants are thrown about, and the boy walks through the surrounding grass and ants scatter trying to avoid being stepped on. A boy sprays water from a garden hose into an anthill, the water floods through the hill, we see ants being washed away, we see the structure of the hill collapsing, and some ants run and scream.
 A miniaturized boy is catapulted off a reed, he lands hard on the ground and many ants follow him. A miniaturized boy is taken by several ants, placed at the opening of an anthill and pushed in it; we hear the boy scream, he tumbles through the passageways and lands in a pool of sticky goo. A chemical fog approaches ants and a miniaturized boy, and the boy struggles to get away but is engulfed by the cloud (we emerges unharmed later).
 A beetle walks into a beam of sunlight and is burned (it bursts into a small flame and turns into a pile of ash). A miniaturized boy walks through a beam of sunlight and is burned on the arm (we hear a sizzle). Rocks fall on the heads of sleeping ants inside an anthill (they are awakened and one falls from its perch).
 A miniaturized boy jumps across a ravine, crashes into the wall on the other side, slips down and is snagged on a stick and helped up. A miniaturized boy is dragged by two ants and presented to a council of ants. A miniaturized boy and three ants jump toward a spinning fan and are blown across a room.
 A bully picks a boy up by the underwear, the boy screams and the underwear rips. A boy is pushed to the ground by a bully. A bully flicks the ear of another boy. A bully threatens several children, the children run after the bully and he runs away screaming.
 A man begins to shrink after having been injected with a miniaturizing potion, he ends up smaller and mal-formed with some parts of his body larger than others (for instance, one eye remains large and one side of his face is larger than the other).
 An exterminator prepares his chemicals and begins to spray a cloud of dark smoke around a yard. Wasps prepare to sting an ant and a miniaturized boy but are interrupted.
 A miniaturized boy panics, he scurries around his bed, slips and falls off the bed and into a bag of potato chips, and the bag tips over and he pours out onto the floor. A drop of liquid is poured into a boy's ear and the boy is miniaturized.
 We see a cave painting depicting the "cloud blower" or the "evil one" and it looks like a huge human with glowing eyes and we are told that death follows him. We hear that a wasp's nest has been destroyed by an exterminator. A large number of ants chant, "kill the Destroyer!" (who's a boy) and "let's eat him." A miniaturized boy yells, "boo!" and an ant runs screaming. An ant yells in frustration in a few scenes. A woman tells a boy: "Don't let the bed bugs bite, or creep into your ear and lay eggs in your brain." An ant makes reference to the "dreaded yellow rain."
 A miniaturized boy lands on a man's head where he finds insects eating skin scales from the man's scalp; the boy falls off the head and lands on the man's nose, then slips down and grabs onto the man's nostril hairs, the man sneezes and the boy and goo are sprayed onto the ground. Ants and a miniaturized boy eat "honey dew," which turns out to be caterpillar dung (the boy turns green and acts as if he is going to vomit when he realizes what he has been eating). A woman's false teeth fall out of her mouth and onto grass (we see saliva dangling from them as they fall). An ant thinks a boy is disgusting because he is soft and his skeleton is on the inside. A miniaturized boy burps loudly several times.
 A woman believes that there are aliens and that they are coming to Earth to abduct her so she has installed warning devices in her room that set off alarms in a couple of scenes.

LANGUAGE 1 - 4 mild scatological terms, 1 anatomical term, 5 exclamations ("craznots"), name-calling (stink bug, fat head, stupid, jerk, alien scum, pukas, losers).

SUBSTANCE USE - A man smokes a cigar in a few scenes.

DISCUSSION TOPICS - Bullies, aliens, size, barbarism, attacking without reason, ants, feelings, finding your place, friendship, sacrifice, differences, team work.

MESSAGE - Empathy is being able to see things from someone else's perspective.

CAVEATS

Be aware that while we do our best to avoid spoilers it is impossible to disguise all details and some may reveal crucial plot elements.

We've gone through several editorial changes since we started covering films in 1992 and older reviews are not as complete & accurate as recent ones; we plan to revisit and correct older reviews as resources and time permits.

Our ratings and reviews are based on the theatrically-released versions of films; on video there are often Unrated, Special, Director's Cut or Extended versions, (usually accurately labelled but sometimes mislabeled) released that contain additional content, which we did not review.


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