Tom Hanks propelled the making of this fun-filled fable about family, friendship and fair play after reading John Nickle’s popular children’s tale to his kids.

Ten year-old Lucas Nickel (Zach Tyler Eisen) is having a tough time. Not only is his family preoccupied but, as the neighborhood’s newest resident, he’s routinely bullied by the bigger kids. In turn, Lucas vents his frustration on an ant hill in his yard, often stomping on it or drenching it with his squirt gun. He doesn’t realize that his actions place an entire colony in peril until Wizard Ant Zoc (voiced by Nicholas Cage) concocts a magic potion that suddenly shrinks Lucas down to ant size, placing him at the mercy of the Head of the Ant Council (voiced by Ricardo Montalban). Sentenced by the Ant Queen (voiced by Meryl Streep) to live and labor among the ants to learn their ways, he’s befriended by Zoc’s kind-hearted girl-friend, Hova (voiced by Julia Roberts). Meanwhile, there’s an even more menacing peril – the Exterminator (voiced by Paul Giamatti).

Like “Antz” and “A Bug’s Life,” writer/director John A. Davis (“Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius”) cleverly anthropomorphizes this miniature world where Lucas must not only learn the rules and take responsibility but also absorb important life lessons about trust, cooperation, loyalty and standing up for himself – all through a new perspective.

Recalling the highly stylized visual effects of stop-motion animation pioneer Ray Harryhausen (“The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad,” “Jason and the Argonauts”), Davis has created an adventurous, imaginative realm - and Lucas’ journey inside the stomach of a hungry frog is particularly evocative.

On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “The Ant Bully” is an inspired 8, a magical mix of action and humor – an enormously entertaining whole-family film.