User blog:GoosebumpsArt/Awesome Ants (TV Review)

In the not too distant past — the year 2017 — I actually did reviews.

...But I became so bored of summarizing the Enter HorrorLand subplot that I ended up putting it off for months. So, instead of abandoning reviews, I'll just review something that seems like fun.

"Awesome Ants" (TV review)
For more info on the episode, consider checking out the article.

Before I watch the episode...
I remember watching this episode once, but I don't remember it being particularly good.

The plot.
The episode starts off at an ice-cream parlor. And, like with any classy establishments, there are ants crawling all over the counter and the food. As a matter of fact, there are swarms of ants everywhere!

The episode's production quality immediately begins to shine in two areas:
 * 1) Rather than using actual ants, the production team decided to put a bunch of round, black dots on the wall. Rather than moving them individually, they just applied a ripple effect, and it looks bad.
 * Ben, the protagonist's friend, says "Look at those ants!" while the camera is pointed away from him. When the camera cuts back to him, you can still hear him making the "ts" sound in "ants", but his lips aren't moving.

The ice-cream store owner apparently doesn't notice that his arm is covered with ants, so the protagonist, Dave, has to tell him. Then he runs out of the store screaming. Everyone in the store does the same. Outside, Dave is crushed by a giant ant that falls from the sky! It's quickly revealed that the ant is a decoration for an exterminator's truck which, evidently, wasn't secured at all. The car is owned by Mr. Lantz, who exterminates antz. Oh, he's also dressed like a Ghostbuster.

Like any good exterminator, he takes the children into the infested location. Mr. Lantz find the ant queen, and he crushes her in his fist, which produces an inordinate fistful of slime. Mr. Lants hands Dave a mail order form and tells the kid that he should buy a terrarium for ants from the "Awesome Ants" company. Dave needs a science project, but he's skeptical of the company at first. But once he sees the 10/10 design work on the pamphlet, he can't say no!

Dave fills out the order form, and his package arrives the next day. Maybe he accidentally paid for the Awesome Ants Prime delivery. Most shocking of all, the terrarium is the size of a two cars stacked on top of each other, but it only costed 5 dollars. I guess inflation has gone up more than I thought it has since 1998. The farm comes with instructions that Dave is too lazy to read and a bottle of blue food-pills for the ants. The book says to feed the ants one pill and nothing more, which Dave does, but Ben says they should feed the ants more. The boys feed the hungry insects some hot dogs. Nathant's Famous, I presume. (I'm sorry.)

The next day, the ants are loose and in the kitchen, which Dave is oddly happy about? He goes outside and sees the hatch on the big terrarium broke. He puts a cinder-block over the lid.

At school, Dave gives a presentation. Mr. Lantz, for some reason walks into the back of the classroom and gets to see the end of the presentation. He shouldn't have know about the presentation. Nobody invited him there. What's he doing wandering through a middle school??? Mr. Lantz sees video footage of Dave's ants, and he says that the ants look three inches long, which should be impossible. He also hints that he believes that three-inch-ants would result in the destruction of mankind. Well, I sure am glad 3+ inch bugs don't exist in the real world.

When Dave gets home, the terrarium's lid is open again, he closes it again, blah blah blah. His mom's making turkey for dinner. That night, he finds a dog-sized ant in his room, which he kills with a tennis racket. It appears that the ant came in through a hole in his wall. All of his family members appear to have gone missing, so Dave goes in search of Mr. Lantz.

Inside Mr. Lantz's business, Dave finds a bunch of human-sized ants! I have to admit, the giant ants look much better than the swarms of ants at the beginning. A giant ant picks up Dave, and the scene actually looks okay. Right when things look hopeless, Dave wakes up. There's no hole in his wall and no terrarium outside, so he thinks everything that he remembers was a dream. Dave goes downstairs for some cereal. He begins pouring some cereal into a bowl. Instead of Grape Nuts, Dave finds that his regular cereal has been replaced by blue pills! His sister gets mad at him for trying to increase his rations, which only confuses poor Dave. Dave finds that all of the food in his house has been replaced by the same type of blue pills. When they hear a beeping, Dave's family runs outside. Dave's mother tells him to grab a bucket. The giant ant overlords delivered a big pile of blue food-pills. Did I forget to mention that there were giant ant overlords and that Dave's entire neighborhood is in a terrarium? Woops. Dave sees Mr. Lantz, who isn't actually an exterminator at all. Dave tells Mr. Lantz that he dreamed ants were tiny. Mr. Lantz comforts Dave and tells him to grab some rations before they're gone.

Thoughts
The beginning to this episode was really goofy. Some of the editing, effects, and props in this episode were downright lazy.

That ending was pretty good, in my opinion. It was really bleak and depressing.

I think this episode was the Goosebumps show's rendition of an old-school monster movie. The episode was far from perfect, but I'd be lying if I said it wasn't a little bit enjoyable.

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