Arnie & Barney review: a dull ant spin-off falls flat

By Tom Whitfield

Arnie & Barney, the first spin-off film built around Maya the Honey Bee’s two dimwit ants, receives a blunt verdict: “quite how staggeringly ugly and uninteresting the whole endeavour is.”

The film gives Arnie and Barney more than their old supporting role. They become narrators, explain the mission and address a larger platoon of ants. The change is structural rather than substantial.

The franchise behind the ants

The story begins in 1912, when the antisemitic writer Waldemar Bonsels published The Adventures of Maya the Bee in Germany. The book later became a 1970s anime series in Japan called Maya the Honey Bee. English-language versions followed, including a Nickelodeon dub for children’s television in the 1990s and a series of films from 2014 to 2021.

Arnie and Barney recur in the anime as dimwit ants. Their own film arrives after that long adaptation history and at last moves them from recurring figures to the centre.

A chase before the story begins

The film starts in the middle of the action. A young female bee flies through outer space, clutching a small pig and a droplet of water the size of her head. Several wasp-like creatures pursue her. A narrator solemnly intones: “Sometimes the most unlikely heroes … become legends.”

The bee stops beside a pair of red ants and asks what they are doing. They explain that they are the narrators. The film then reveals the arrangement as fantasy: the ants are telling the story to a larger platoon of ants.

A stretch of exposition follows. The pair’s mission is to find fresh water. A précis can make that arrangement sound workable. The opening does something more awkward. It supplies danger, an unexplained cargo and a declaration of legend before stepping back to explain the storytelling frame.

Design and script undermine the leads

Character design is the first substantial problem. Arnie and Barney are hard to watch, and it is difficult to imagine any but the most aesthetically starved children embracing the pair. The criticism rejects the appearance of the leads as well as the writing that gives them lines and action.

The review puts it directly: “Boy are they a chore to spend time with,” citing both the visual design and the “lacklustre script.” Moving familiar characters into the lead roles does not repair either fault. It gives the audience more time with figures the film has already failed to make engaging.

This review supplies no release date, director, voice cast, animation studio or account of how the fresh-water quest ends. Its criticism therefore rests on the opening, the character design and the script, not on a technical appraisal of the production.

What does the spin-off change for families?

Practically, it offers a new vehicle for two familiar ants and removes much of the pleasure of watching them. Families looking for children’s entertainment have a clear recommendation: skip this one, even if they are short of options. The review goes further and says children would be better served by avoiding it.

For Maya the Honey Bee, the lineage is substantial: a 1912 book, a 1970s Japanese anime, 1990s English television and films from 2014 to 2021. Arnie & Barney adds a spin-off, but not a persuasive reason to watch it.