I just watched the Tom Hanks-produced CGI animated feature, The Ant Bully. I streamed it through Netflix and I am supremely impressed with the quality fo the video and the audio (surround effects abounded).
Eight years after Pixar and Dreamworks each produced their take on insect fantasia through CGI, Warner Bros.’ The Ant Bully finally capitalises on the full promise of grandeur of everyday things through perspective of diminutive scale. Each of the predecessor films made artful attempts at presenting the overwhelming scale of human-sized objects from a shrunken perspective, but those attempts were stymied, I think, by the tongue-in-cheek manner in which the environments were exploited by the insect characters. Something that made this film work for me was the introduction of a human character into the scale: this allows the ants to just be ants, natural in their own environment, rather than witty anthropomorphised translations of human affects to an otherwise alien environment.
In this film, the fantasy of dealing with every day objects from a miniature scale that I often dreamed of as a kid (watching films like Honey I Shrunk the Kids and The Incredible Shrinking Man/Woman) is finally realised by presenting them exactly as they are. This was particularly true during the moments when the characters are exploring completely human environments, such as the title character’s living room and kitchen during an incredible flying adventure depicting hang gliding onrose petals adrift in fan-driven air currents across the room. It was really rather breath-taking.
And speaking of breath-taking, I think this film so far has been the most successful exercise in exploiting fantastical lighting and texture schemes. There are tons of translucent or internally lit objects that are exquisitely textured: it’s really a lot of eye candy, and it heightens the sense of otherworldliness in the ant’s domain. But, even otherwise everyday objects like fragments of broken bottles are presented in an utterly different light (literally) that makes watching this film such a treat.
Here’s one example of texture that I thought was fantastic: all the ant characters had compound eyes (although they still had eyelids and irises for expression), and each ant had its own distinct facial and body markings that were almost like tribal body art:
an example of the textures, tribal markings, and compound eyes used for the ant characters in The Ant Bully
The Queen, with no irises, to give her a more alien sensibility
There was extensive use of micro-textures employed throughout the film, almost every surface. And what made the light so fantastic was not only the refractive qualities and the translucent materials, but also a great deal of diffusion: the film featured a number of seens incorporating swirling mist and smoke that played with the light in interesting ways.
A prime example of the fantastic light diffusion and detailed textures. Click on the image to see it in detail: it's stunning.
In addition to the lighting and textures and the general rendering quality of the visuals, the visual compositions were very inventive. In a scene where the ants team up with the local wasps’ nest to fight The Exterminator, the allusions to large scale aerial warfare, with the wasps taking on aircraft formations (both in the air and on the ground), replete with with the obligatory crash landing with a weighty slide through the dirt right at the camera… well, it was clever and incredibly well executed.
There are some moments of true wit that also make the film an engaging watch: a scene where a small firecracker’s explosion is seen/heard/felt from the ant’s worldview, followed immediately by showing exactly how trivial it is from the human perspective elicited an out-loud laugh. MOre interesting was the arch-villain, The Exterminator, whose name is Stan Beals. He’s an oily, conniving man with flies constantly swarming around his head. It made me think of Beelzebub (The Lord of the Flies), and sure enough, when he presented a business card, his business name is revealed to be “Beals-a-Bug”. Clever. Of course, the film has its fair share of gross-out moments, too: a scene in the belly of a bullfrog; a moment amidst the lice-infested follicles of The Exterminator’s crusty, flaky scalp; and encounter with nose hair and snot; and several repeated occurrences of the granny character losing her slobbery dentures in various gross locales. The film would have survived just fine without these moments: the “yuck” was indeed accompanied by laughter, but I’m not sure it was worth it.
I was surprised at the number of talented big-name actors they brought in to bring their characters to life: Julia Roberts, Nicolas Cage, Paul Giamatti, Lilly Tomlin, Ricardo Mantalban, and funniest (and most apropos) of all: Bruce Campbell! Given the stunning CGI, top name actors and producers, I’m wondering why I didn’t hear more about the film when it was released. It didn’t get all the hoopla a Dreamworks or Pixar animated film receives. I would like to have seen this film in the cinema: especially since it was presented in 3D. My recent experiences with 3D CGI have been amazing: I’ll go see anything released in 3D these days, the technology is that good.
However, despite as much as I can applaud this film for its visual story-telling and wit, I do have some problems with the thematic subtext of the film, which will be the subject of a subsequent post.