Kids have always had a love-hate relationship with ants – my own 4-year-old at turns coddles them and stomps on them with alarming fervor – and The Ant Bully ingeniously explores this childhood inconsistency. This CGI movie centers on a bullied kid who passes the abuse on to the insects in his yard. When an ant wizard (voiced by Nicolas Cage) shrinks the boy down to his victims’ size, he sees things from a new perspective. This is first and foremost a delightful skewing of perspective. When the kid teams up with the ants to defend against an even bigger enemy – an exterminator – the movie’s battle sequences play like miniaturized versions of the landmark dogfighting scenes in Star Wars.
