Rating: 1 on 5

Director: R D Mallik

Cast: Ashish Vidyarthi, Mahesh Manjrekar, Asrani, Anjan Srivastava and others.

When I was younger, my mother used to take my brother and me to watch animated movies like Aladdin, Lion King, Chicken Run, Dinosaur and Shrek. The appeal of these movies was universal and to her surprise, she liked them too. Adults will find Cheenti Cheenti Bang Bang boring while kids aged five or below might like it because they haven't figured the difference between good and bad movies as yet.


CCBB is a typical Hindi movie but in an animated format where actors have been replaced by curvaceous eyelash fluttering female ants and muscular male ants. Feuding families are replaced by rival ant colonies.

An old red ant, Lal Buddha, accidentally falls on drama queen Kaali Bahu who exaggerates the incident which leads to a war between the two colonies. Meanwhile, the black princess and red prince fall in love and elope to escape the war.
There is the usual song and dance routine with ant lovers, an item song featuring a magician and his props, a slimy traitor, a cowardly king who enjoys watching flexible female insects perform gymnastics in his court, a wise spider who pops out of nowhere with birds, chameleons, snakes and scorpions thrown in for support. The songs are unnecessary too.


The animation in CCBB is colourful. Being 2D it is outdated in the age of 3D wonders like the recent Horton Hears a Who. The actors have tried their best to make their characters lively. Except the animation factor, the movie isn't exactly for kids because it revolves around war, a traitor, an eloping couple and starts off with an old male ant eyeing a young female ant.

Only a few scenes make you smile and the film which is slightly over an hour fails to entertain. The little gyaan offered in the end can be procured from the tales grandparents tell their grandchildren and any other animated movie because most animated movies end with the same message. So dear parent, don't waste your money on movie tickets and popcorn for this movie. Instead, sit at home and rent a DVD of the original Chitty Chitty Bang Bang or animated flicks like Aladdin, A Bug's Life, Finding Nemo, Shrek, The Incredibles or Enchanted.