Minuscule: Valley of the Lost Ants

Minuscule - Valley of the Lost Ants
Film poster
Directed by	Thomas Szabo
Written by	Hélène Giraud Thomas Szabo
Produced by	Philippe Delarue
Music by	Hervé Lavandier
Production companies	Futurikon Futurikon Production 2 Nozon Entre Chien et Loup World Sales: Futurikon
Distributed by	Le Pacte
Release date	17 November 2013 (2013-11-17) (Tallinn) 29 January 2014 (2014-01-29) (France) 26 February 2014 (2014-02-26) (Belgium)
Running time	89 minutes[1]
Countries	France Belgium
Budget	€10.2 million[2]
Box office	$22.8 million[3]

Minuscule: Valley of the Lost Ants (French: Minuscule : La vallée des fourmis perdues) is a 2013 French-Belgian live action animated film based on the television series Minuscule. The film was written and directed by series creators and Thomas Szabo. This film is a sound film with a synchronized soundtrack featuring music and sound effects and with little to no spoken dialogue.^[4] It won the César Award for Best Animated Feature Film at the 40th César Awards. A sequel, ^[5], was released on January 30, 2019.

Plot[]

In the valleys of France, a bold newly hatched male ladybug named Cox is always bullied by a group of flies led by the childish Toofette, and attempts to fly away, but they chase after him. He crashes into a rock and into a crevice, knocking him out and breaking off a wing. Unable to fly and locate his family, Cox shelters in a tin for the night. The tin is full of sugar cubes, part of an abandoned kitchen, having its owners abandon it due to them rushing to the city for their new baby to arrive.

In the morning, various bugs have raided on the kitchen's bounty & are busy carrying off it's spoils when Cox, now an adult, gets up to join them in their heist. A foraging patrol of black ants, find the kitchen and start carrying off the tin, with Cox still inside, whom they find and allow him to join them, to their busy nest. The ants encounter a patrol of red ants led by the fearful Butor, who try to stop them so they can get their food, so the black ants try to give them a sugar cube as a peace offering, but they pursue them anyway for the rest of the sugar.

The black ants escape by sliding down an embankment & into a river, on board the top of the tin, sending them on a wild ride. Cox falls overboard and the ants rescue him from a hungry pike named Boboche. The red ants track them down stream in a soda can. They all go over a waterfall and the tin washes up on the shore, while the soda can and Boboche sink down onto the river bottom. The black ants pick up the sugar cubes and start hauling them back to their nest. After hauling themselves onto land, Butor's patrol continue to follow them until they are separated while following the black patrol onto a road, leaving Butor all by himself to find the anthill, & report back to his colony and nest, while his patrol run back home all together.

On the journey, Cox becomes friends with the patrol's leader, Mandible. He meets another family of flying ladybugs Cox trys to join, with one Cox falls in love with, but unable to fly with them on one wing, makes the decision to remain with the ants as his new family. After the long & arduous journey, they arrive at the busting big city nest where Mandible invites him to join the colony until they find Cox's family, & they present their hoard of food to the queen in the gallery. At midnight, he dreams of flying with its family and the other one, with his girlfriend, wakes up and tests its wings. His wing & strength is regrowing slowly and steady, but he still can't fly.

The next morning, Butor, his patrol & the entire red ant colony arrive with a massive army and besiege the black ant's nest by bombarding and destroying it using weapons and try to ram the front door, sometimes killing both kinds of ants in the process. The black ants use their own weapons including dropping objects on them or setting off fireworks which incinerates and kills some red ants, but they don't have any more matches to light the rest. Cox remembers that there was a box of matches at the abandoned picnic, and now able to fly, even though the ants make a paper plane for him, escapes the red ant siege, & sets off into the forest to retrieve them.

At the now empty picnic area, Cox find the matchbox but isn't strong enough to fly back with it. A tiny black male spider runs off with the matchbox and takes it to its dollhouse in a basement, which his parents warned him about. Cox follows anyway and sneaks into the house. A frog named Jean-Paul tries to eat them for dinner by grabbing them with its tongue through a window, but the duo fight back and the house topples onto the frog, seemingly crushing him (off-screen) and knocking Cox out in the process, as he has an actual dream about the other family leaving behind his girlfriend. After a night's rest, and grapes for breakfast, Cox is feeling better. After he makes a bond with the spider, Cox persuades him to let him have the matches and sets out with them back to the nest. Cox stops on the way to save his lover from Toofette's gang, which are all killed and knocked out after an open chase ends up with them ramming into an automobile, with the ladybugs getting the last laugh. They have a wedding and a honeymoon in the valley before Cox leaves her to resume his mission.

He returns to the besieged fortress which has now been half demolished. With their new matches, the black ants fire off their remaining weapons incinerating & wiping out parts of the red ant population in the world and starting a wildfire that drives their entire colony away to their anthill in defeat, with Butor swearing revenge on the heroes. A fire & rescue plane patrol arrives and extinguish the wildfire, saving Cox & the entire black ant colony, but flattening the nest into a tiny hill of mud in the process. They all emerge from the basement and begin rebuilding, while Cox leaves back to the meadow to raise his new family with its lover. A few years later, they return to the newly rebuilt ant nest and Cox sits with his old friend, as they watch the sunset, & their next adventures are just beginning.

Home media[]

Minuscule was released on both DVD and Blu-ray in France on 26 August 2014.^[6][7] It was later released in a Blu-ray collection together with its sequel, Minuscule - Mandibles from Far Away, on 5 November 2019.^[8]

Accolades[]

• Nominated: 2013 Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival (Best Children's Film)
• Nominated: 27th European Film Awards (Best Animated Feature Film)
• Nominated: San Sebastian International Film Festival (Best Animated Feature Film)
• Official preselection: Academy Awards and BAFTA
• Won: Mill Valley Film Festival (San Francisco) (Children’s FilmFest Gold Award)
• Won: Chicago International Children’s Film Festival (Honorary Prize)
• Won: China International Cartoon and Animation Festival (Silver cup prize for the animated film)
• Won: 5th Magritte Awards (Magritte Award for Best Foreign Film in Coproduction)
• Won: 40th Cesar Awards (César Award for Best Animated Feature Film)

References[]

External links[]

• Minuscule: Valley of the Lost Ants at IMDb
• Minuscule: Valley of the Lost Ants at Rotten Tomatoes