Movies for Kids

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Seeing the first children’s movie in a long time that doesn’t turn my
stomach, The Ant Bully, I am only reminded of how noxious and
base the majority of swill made for children is; the cinematic
equivalent of Cheez Wiz. I am personally not a fan of the Adam Sandler
and Will Ferrell genres of lad-yukks, but so many children’s films are
virtually cut from the same cloth: an inane series of fart jokes and
casual violence and abject stupidity.

The Ant Bully, thankfully has the strength of character to
actually say something (though there is also the requisite
potty-humor), and offers insight into our culture of bullying
individualism and isolation in the human world contrasted with the
community and cooperation of the ant world. The message about bullying,
and how might does not make right must be a real muddle for parents to
explain to their wee things post-screening when the subject of Iraq
comes up. It’s ironic how the moral lessons we teach our children are
so rarely our own. It all seems very progressive, very matriarchal,
and a nice corollary to the Sept. 11=Iraq War=Let’s Kick Some Terrorist
Ass message of Oliver Stone’s politically wacked World Trade
Center.

The Ant Bully is matriarchal in terms of the ant colony, presided
over by the voice of Meryl Streep, even if the human mother in the
film, despite being presented as a pitiable and beloved figure for her
son, is given an ass the size of Topeka in the usual disparagement of
mothers as mom-jeans wearing, SUV-driving soccer-mom lunatics. Are
there any equivalent caricatures of fathers?

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