Ant Invasion

If you like good kids’ movies and free stuff, you may wanna see The Ant Bully on Saturday. Just sayin’.

I just got back from interviewing John A. Davis, the writer-director of the animated gem The Ant Bully, which opens Friday and is reviewed in the paper version of Unfair Park that hits stands today. Davis, of course, is the “D” in DNA Productions, the locally based animation production company Davis started with Keith Alcorn in 1987. Theirs is an impressive filmography, including not only the likes of The Ant Bully, which Tom Hanks produced and Alcorn executive produced, but also the animated Oscar-nominated Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius, the Emmy-nominated Christmas special Olive, the Other Reindeer and Santa vs. the Snowman–not to mention the far more adult fare of Nanna & Lil’ Puss Puss, an old woman and her kitty cat who star in shorts with such titles as “Love that Pussy,” “The Booby Trap” and “Who Calcutta the Cheese?”

Anyway, we’ll have an interview with Davis on Unfair Park on Friday, when The Ant Bully opens. But I did want to give you a heads-up in case you were planning on taking a tyke or two to the film this weekend: Davis says he and his wife and Alcorn will be theater-hopping around town on Saturday, passing out Ant Bully goodies for all the little girls and boys. He’s not sure where they’ll be and when; NorthPark’s AMC came up as a possibility, but beyond that there were no specifics. “It’s a blast,” Davis says. “We did it for Jimmy Neutron, and we had more fun than the kids.” So choose wisely, and perhaps you can get your grubbies on some goodies courtesy Warner Bros. and the man who’s made one of the annum’s more delightful and thoughtful movies for kids and the old folks who made ’em. –Robert Wilonsky