Minuscule: Valley of the Lost Ants (or, in the original French, Minuscule - La vallée des fourmis perdues) is the Big Damn Movie treatment for the Minuscule television series.
It tells the epic story of a small, lonely ladybug separated from her family by accident not long after hatching, trying to find her way in the harsh, scary world... Except the world is rather nice and pretty as anything. And full of interesting stuff humans left (we are the good sort of Neglectful Precursors, apparently). Like toys. Or sugar... Finding herself befriending a group of cute black ants who have procured a box of sugar on the site of an interrupted picnic, she ends up on an oddyssey of adventure on the way back to the anthill, including an encounter with their regular foes, the red ants. And the red ants really want this sugar for themselves. Cue a dramatic Ant War.
The theatrical budget allows the live-action/computer-animation world to become an utterly gorgeous movie, the complete lack of spoken dialogue continuing and making the film an example of a modern Silent Film.
A sequel came out in 2019, titled Minuscule 2 : Les Mandibules du Bout du Monde (localized in English as Minuscule: Mandibles from Far Away).
Minuscule: Valley of the Lost Ants provides examples of:
- Amicable Ants: Zigzagged. The black ants are the first ones to treat the ladybug with kindness after she gets lost from her family. On the other turn, the red ants are bad guys who want to kill them to get the sugar.
- Annoying Laugh: The small fly that taunts the ladybug has that.
- Ant Assault: The red ants are the main antagonists of the movie, organizing The Siege on the black ant colony to steal their sugar cubes.
- Ant War: The Siege, to be exact, with both sides using human "weapons" like bug spray and fireworks. And slingshots.
- Badass Adorable: The ladybug shall stop at nothing to help her ant friends.
- Carnivore Confusion: Most ladybugs in Real Life feed mostly on aphids. They sometimes eat berries, but definitely not by sucking them out.
- Chekhov's Gun: The matches.
- Colour-Coded for Your Convenience: Nice black ants (also notably cuter, with larger, rounder eyes) versus bad red ants.
- Dedication: To Jean Giraux a.k.a. Mœbius.
- The Determinator: The red ants' squadron leader.
- The Dog Bites Back: The ladybug gets revenge on the flies that caused her to lose her family and her wing by taunting them to follow her to the road and be hit by the same yellow car that scared her and the black ants during the trip to the colony.
- The Faceless: Averted for humans in this film, we get a good look at the couple at the start whose leftover picnic serves as the spark of the plot.
- Flies Equals Evil: A petty, bullying sort of it.
- The Four Loves: Seems the main motivation for the friendly ladybug.
- Good Animals, Evil Animals: Most are nice, but beware the red ants.
- Gray Rain of Depression: It rains heavily as the young ladybug finds herself all alone, without a wing and scared of everything around her.
- Haunted House: The spider's doll house really comes up like one, at first.
- Insect Queen: Black ants have a motherly queen surrounded by green… critters (aphids?). The red queen has God Save Us from the Queen! vibes around her.
- Lured into a Trap: The small fly that laughed at the ladybug when she was learning to fly taunts her again later. The ladybug, not knowing better, follows him angrily to a tree stump... to be surrounded by the fly's brother, who are for times bigger than her. Judging by the fact that the flies were bullying a male ladybug later, they enjoy harassing other insects... or just ladybugs.
- MacGuffin: Box of sugar cubes, apparently irresistible to ants.
- Maternity Crisis: The picnicing human couple at the start end up hastily leaving their food behind when the pregnant woman starts going into labor.
- Mime and Music-Only Cartoon: Cartoon mixed with live movie, but even the human couple in the opening scene communicates purely in gesture. The insects buzz.
- Mouse World: The events of the movie are seen from a tiny insect's point of view. For instance, the spider's doll house is treated as a full-sized Haunted House.
- The Movie: The series is done in the same no dialogue, animation blended with live material, Scenery Porn way.
- Rescue Romance: The ladybug falls for a male ladybug (and he for her) she saved from the same flies that pursued her in the beginning of the film.
- Ridiculously Cute Critter: The cutest insects ever!
- Running the Blockade: The blockade is insurmountable to ants, but ladybugs can fly, luckily.
- Sliding Scale of Animal Communication: All the insects communicate in buzzing, understandable to them, but not to us.
- Spiders Are Scary: Subverted Trope — the spider's a cute, curious and helpful soul. Although he does live in a Scooby-Doo house.
- Stock Animal Diet: Ants raid the sugar, but the ladybird seems to prefer berries.
- Strong Ants: They have no trouble carrying an entire (tin) box of sugar, about the size of a lunchbox.
- War for Fun and Profit: The red ants really want this sugar. Apart from being generally not-nice.
Minuscule: Mandibles from Far Away provides examples of:
- Boring Return Journey: No storms, no sharks, over in seconds, really.
- Chekhov's Gun:
- The spider uses his IPod and some loud hiphop to annoy the shark into stomach ache and letting them out.
- The Deadly Gas capability of caterpillars is instrumental in driving humans away.
- Classical Music: The spider is a fan — he listens on an IPod and insists on having appropriately dramatic music during the storm.
- Creepy Cockroach: Subverted, the cockroach is nothing but friendly and helps the dad ladybug navigate the airport.
- Deadly Gas: The Caribbean caterpillars release a cloud of it when crushed or when they want to — it gives humans a horrible green rash. European ladybugs can release it, too, when scared.
- Everyone Knows Morse: The black ants around the world use it to communicate between continents by signalling with their antennae.
- A Friend in Need: The spider and the ant cross the Atlantic to help the ladybugs.
- Humans Are Bastards: Human construction activity becomes a significant danger to the insect characters this time around.
- Human Mail: This is how the main ladybug character ends up in Central America in the first place.
- I Can't Believe It's Not Heroin!: Once again, sugar cubes for the ants. Their attempt of stealing some from a shop in the beginning is how the young ladybug ends up in a box, shipped to Guadeloupe. And some red ants end up in Beijing the same way.
- I Choose to Stay: The young ladybug decides to stay on the island with his beloved.
- Interspecies Romance: Between the young ladybug and one of the native Caribbean ladybugs (which are black with red spots, just so we know they're foreign).
- Papa Wolf: The dad ladybug will outsmart flies and cross the Atlantic to help his kid out of trouble.
- Slaying Mantis: They almost act like Jurassic Park raptors. With Hypnotic Eyes.
- The Sky Is an Ocean: The spider and the ant use a toy ship with balloons to fly over the Atlantic, or at least they intend to. It works brilliantly for a Big Damn Heroes Gunship Rescue moment.
- Somewhere, an Entomologist Is Crying: The Caribbean ladybugs eat coconuts. Probably for Rule of Funny reasons. Also, insects flying around amid European winter is not very probable.
- Spiders Are Scary: Apart from our old friendly spider, there's the terrifyingly adorable Caribbean one — fluffy, big-eyed and freakin' huge compared to the ladybugs.
- The Stinger: The red ants end up in Beijing.
- Strong Ants: Not just ants — one ladybug lifts an apple, and a group easily carries coconuts around.
- Surveillance Station Slacker: The security guard in the French grocery shop watches TV, feet on desk, and steals marshmallows.
- The Swarm: Of menacing red ants.
- Telepathy: How the elder caterpillar gets the summary of plot so far from the dad ladybug.
- Travel Montage: From France to the Caribbean, with Dreadlock Rasta driver to pick the box up and reggae to drive it home. The spider and the ant follow the same route, until they get Swallowed Whole by a shark. Who swims in loops.
- Threatening Shark: Swallows the ship after it falls in the water.
- Vacation Episode: The film's action takes place in the Caribbean, set in Guadeloupe, complete with rasta caterpillars. Yup.
- Wacky Sound Effect: Though not necessarily wacky, the mantis's actions are given mechanical sounds, evoking the feeling of a fierce, dangerous robot hunter.
