Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: The Ant Bully

This is topic The Ant Bully in forum Film Handlers' Movie Reviews at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.

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Posted by Chris Hipp (Member # 1788) on 07-28-2006, 04:27 AM:

Richard Hamilton will love this movie, pure communist propoganda. Much more intelligent than I was expecting. I dont think the kids will get a lot of the jokes. Overall very nice. The firecracker scene cracked me up.

Posted by Brian Michael Weidemann (Member # 2243) on 07-28-2006, 06:46 AM:

I saw this for the first time a week ago when I ran an advance screening. IMAX 3D, of course.

The movie itself is typical, formulaic, learn-how-the-other-guys-live kids' movie crap. I wasn't at all impressed by the trailer, and I wasn't looking forward to it. But it didn't turn out too bad. It was just nothing special or unique, and I didn't expect it to be. The firecracker gag was, indeed, a good laugh.

But the IMAX 3D version must be seen, if the option is available for one's first viewing! This uses practically the FULL frame, fully rendered at large format resolutions. The second eye was clearly rendered independently. This was not a 2D-to-3D conversion! In fact, the credit scroll itself had a whole IMAX section ... in the SCROLL! That's a first. So were the DMR credits. They weren't cards just tacked on before the studio logo and ratings card, like every other DMR. The credits sequence itself was visually interesting.

The 3D looks amazing. The framing and camera movement clearly had 3D in mind because I found so much of it actually effective. Just for the visuals throughout the whole movie, I thought it was worth it. Good job IMAX! [thumbsup]

I anticipate good word-of-mouth getting people in the IMAX seats instead of the boring 2D 35mm houses. [Wink]

Posted by Mark Lensenmayer (Member # 134) on 08-03-2006, 04:32 PM:

One of the worst scripts ever. (Is that strong enough?)
Ranks somewhere between RABBIT TEST and WHERE THE BUFFALO ROAM. (RABBIT TEST is a film written by Joan Rivers, where Billy Crystal becomes the first pregnant man, and WHERE THE BUFFALO ROAM has Bill Murray portraying Hunter Thompson. Both were just plain dreadful.)

First, this is a great looking movie. The Imax 3-D is exquisite. Animation is very smooth. Color is deep and full.

But the story is just awful. The characters are very weak and uninteresting. Voice actors are uninspired and sound like they really didn't want to be doing this. Story is totally predictable.

Computer animation does not make a good film. Only story and character make a film memorable.

Mostly a family audience...children seemed uninterested. Child behind me was mostly interested in identifying the exact type of ant.

At least 1 Imax house is moving to only 1 or 2 shows per day, and this is after just one week!