July 30, 2006

Ants who aren't ants

As long as I am bashing Disney for moving oak trees into Australia, another "nature faker" prize should go to the movie The Ant Bully, here witheringly reviewed by the Washington Post's Stephen Hunter.

And the only thing that even makes it marginally arguable is, as I have said, anthropomorphism gone pathological. As movie design, the ants have been prettified and given eloquent voice and movement; their pincers, meant to tear the flesh off other ants in their ceaseless wars, have been stylized into design accessories in the form of well-placed, clearly vestigial decorative shells resembling earrings. The ants aren't ants anymore, but human beings. Their very anthood, their genetic reality, has been obliterated and replaced with idealized archetypes from some touchy-feely new agey pacifist's infinitely superior brain.

I like a reviewer who can speak his mind. (Hat tip: Hell in a Handbasket.)

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