Reviewed - The Ant Bully: The picture, which bears uncomfortable similarities to both A Bug's Life and Antz, imagines a colony of ants being devastated by an unprovoked act of aggression, writes Donald Clarke.

Regular readers of The Ticket may, quite reasonably, be sick to the point of actual nausea by this writer's continuing discovery of metaphors for the War on Terror in popular films. Even the sanest of observers will, however, admit that The Ant Bully, a routine animated feature from Warner Brothers, does appear to be trying to say something about that issue.

The picture, which bears uncomfortable similarities to both A Bug's Life and Antz, imagines a colony of ants being devastated by an unprovoked act of aggression. In the aftermath of the calamity, various voices - some bellicose, others more conciliatory - seek to come to terms with new, terrifying realities.

Meanwhile, their antagonist, a young boy named Zach, is embroiled in a battle of his own. Seriously bullied by local ruffians, he takes out his frustration on the unfortunate hexapods occupying a mound in his garden. "I'm big. You're small," the bully resignedly tells him, thus justifying any oppression of the weak by the strong.

Later, following a plot turn unlikely even in a film featuring talking ants, Zach gets shrunk to the same size as his victims.

Some of the lessons Zach learns from his new friends - those, in particular, prioritising the greater good of the masses - could, half a century ago, have gotten the writers of The Ant Bully blacklisted. Indeed, Zach's eventual realisation that a great mass of like-minded organisms may overcome a more technologically advanced enemy (here, a human pest exterminator) carries unhappy messages for those currently ranged against militant Islam.

Anyway, children will be more interested in whether the jokes are funny and the images impressive. The Ant Bully is, sad to relate, barely competent in either area. If there is a message worth heeding here, it is to do with the increasing banality of computer-animated features. Now that the novelty has worn off and even Pixar is treading water (see Cars), the genre is beginning to look in need of a serious jolt of creative energy.