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It's a Bad, Bad, Bad, Bad Movie

Reader Review


Ants

Posted by: EvilReaver
Date Submitted: Tuesday, September 17, 2002 at 14:54:56
Date Posted: Wednesday, September 3, 2003 at 08:55:29

This movie is about ants that can eat anything down to bones in seconds. It takes place in a town in a valley. Here are some of the highlights:

- Early in the movie, two hunters are hunting in a forest somewhere. They see a moose-like creature ("Look, a moose!" one hunter stealthily shouts) and promptly shoot at it. It runs off, and we see the hunters go over to where the moose went. They find the plastic-with-ketchup skeletal remains of said moose. Here the heros of the story come in and yell at the hunters for leaving the moose to rot. "But we just shot it an hour ago, and we followed it here!" one hunter says. But they shot it FIVE SECONDS ago. The heroes wordlessly walk off, and we never see the hunters again.

- After a while, the heroes (a man who doesn't say anything and a woman who doesn't do anything) figure out somehow that ants are causing deaths and are able to move around 30 mph, even though they are standard-sized ants. They promply retreat on a motorcycle that was designed for children, as it is smaller than a typical bicycle. Somehow they both fit AND manage to get that thing up to 31 mph. They really have to squeeze on that thing; it looks really stupid.

- They reach town, and after a half hour of nothing happening they find an "ant-ologist" who knows everything about said ants and somehow figures the ants are headed this way even though she has no way of knowing. The heroes do their respective nothings, and they pick up an unimportant kid who becomes a fourth "hero" in this tale of people doing nothing. The ants arrive in town, and people start screaming and rolling around. Very funny.

- The kid hides in empty bus that crashes into a building only moments after the ants arrive in town, which brings up several questions: (1) There is no driver. Not even the bones the ants usually leave behind. That may explain the crash, but how was it moving to begin with? (2) The bus came from the opposite direction as the ants. How was the "driver" distracted by ants that weren't any more there than the driver was?

- The rest of the heroes make a flamethrower out of -- get this -- a fire extinguisher. The flame effects are made by the guy hero pointing the flamer at the camera (which is at ant-level) and some off-camera crew guy holding a lighter in front of the camera. You can even see the thumb in one shot. The resourceful heroes then proceed to make a set of explosives and go save the kid (whose bus, broken windows and all, is covered in ants) even though the rest of the town is screaming in pain, and they really have no connection to the kid. They show the bus covered in ants, but when they go to open the bus door, no ants. The guy hero opens the door but acts as one would if the handle were, in fact, red-hot. Then they decide to use the explosives to blow a hole in a nearby hill that has a lake on the other side.

- When they reach the hill, they take their backpack-sized explosives and plant it smack in the middle, declaring that point the "weak point in the hill" even though the hill looks the same in all directions. Far down the hill we can see the town. They plan to flood the town with said lake to rid the town of the ant problem, unaware that this will cause a water problem. At least then townsfolk will be alive, right?

- The explosion is comprised of about 50 cents' worth of pyrotechnics, and we see stock footage of a flood. The town is "saved" under 50 feet of water, our heroes rejoice, and credits roll.

Interesting points: The man hero never says anything. The woman heroine will have conversations with herself during parts of the movie to explain the plot, when most movies would have her talking to the guy. When the guy opens the bus door, it is the woman yelling into the bus for the kid to come out, not the man. The kid serves no purpose whatsoever except to be saved from the bus.

Rating: 4 turkeys, but only because of the scene with the people in the town rolling around screaming. At least a dozen per scene! Great stuff.

Scene to watch for: People rolling around. You'll laugh for days.

Best line: "Look, a moose!" or "Here, use this fire extinguisher" when referring to something to make into a flamethrower.

Things that make you go "Huh?": The fire extiguisher, the motorcycle, the bus, the flame effects...almost every prop, in fact.


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