Film review: Miniscule: Valley of the Ants is pitched squarely at children
The title of this film is slightly misleading. It is not about ants, but a ladybird that ends up with some ants.
Minuscule: Valley of the Lost Ants
Directors: Helene Giraud, Thomas Szabo
Category: I (no dialogue)
3/5 stars
this film is slightly misleading. It is not about ants, but a ladybird that ends up with some ants. After getting separated from his family, and injuring himself in a run-in with some annoying flies, our red insect protagonist gets taken in by some friendly black ants.
In nature, any helpless insect gets torn apart as food — but this is a children's movie based on a Belgian/French TV show created by the film's co-writers/directors, Helene Giraud and Thomas Szabo. So the young ladybird is accepted by a different species. Are they just being nice because they've just found a tin of sugar cubes left behind at a picnic?
Ants are a useful analogy for human society. Their city-like colony, in which every creature plays different roles within the group, provides an ideal framework for anthropomorphic storytelling.
The directors combine live photography taken in the forests of the Alps with computer-generated creatures, and the result looks great, whether or not you see it in 3D. Rather than humanise bugs with tight close-ups and facial features, these insects just have large, expressive eyes. Also, since most are shot against a backdrop, they remain, well, minuscule.
It takes a while for the adventure to take shape. Much of it involves the nice ants trying to push their tin of glucose through a natural obstacle course — rivers, walls, fearsome giant insect-eating lizards — and back to their anthill.