I hadn’t been that impressed by Jimmy Neutron, while the rack of mediocre reviews The Ant Bully received overseas left one feeling unenthused before sitting down to watch the film. (Although perhaps what was most funny about reading the US reviews were those that seemed determined to read the ant society as an attempt to preach Marxism/socialism in the guise of a children’s film). But I actually enjoyed The Ant Bully more than I was expecting to.

In many ways The Ant Bully could be considered a sequel to Dreamworks’ more-than-amiable Antz (1998) – maybe you could see it as a conceptual collision between Antz and Honey I Shrunk the Kids (1989)? What I liked about the film was that it had quite an original concept – that of a young boy becoming ant-sized and then having to adjust to a quite alien way of looking at the world. John A. Davis’s screenplay develops this concept with some interest, even devoting time over to the notion of an ant religion and series of prophecies concerning the coming of the predestined Cloud Breather. And in comparison to most other animated films out there at the moment, there is something about The Ant Bully that is determined to work on a conceptual level rather than engage in easy audience-pleasing pop culture references or features animated characters that are desperately trying to be hip.

The animation is extremely good. In Jimmy Neutron, Davis seemed to be making a film that wanted to open up into something artistic – especially during the scene where the fairground rides take flight as rockets. Davis largely construes The Ant Bully around various set-pieces, which all come impressively directed and drawn – the fierce attack on the ant colony by the wasps and Lucas’s saving the day with the Bada Bomb firecracker; the journey through the house and the quite lovely image of Lucas and the ants floating across the giant-sized living room on rose petals blown by the wind from a fan; the attack by a giant sinister frog; and the climactic scenes with the ants riding in to attack the exterminator on the backs of the wasps, which looks for all the world like something out of the Death Star trench sequence in Star Wars (1977).

The characters have standard arcs, notably the central character of Lucas who is just another variant on The Kid Who Learns Better. You sort of felt that characters like Zoc and Hova should have engaged you a lot more than they do, although Bruce Campbell does stand out as the would-be heroic Fugax. And for all the employment of names like Meryl Streep and Lily Tomlin in voice parts, the characters they play are of negligible importance to the film and hardly ever appear.

What the film ultimately settles for tends to be feelgood emotions and an inevitable anti-bullying stance where the underdogs of the neighbourhood stand up against the main tyrant. Occasionally plot devices are a little too obviously wielded – the grandmother and her obsession with aliens and ever-so-convenient habit of placing fans on the floor (to set up the petal gliding sequence); Lucas’s accidental signing of the exterminator contract (which would surely be ruled as an unlawful coercion of a minor in any court of law). One wishes a little more time had been placed on the central concept and the ant culture instead as this is a place where The Ant Bully does touch upon something quite original and imaginative.