{"id":815463,"date":"2026-10-27T12:58:09","date_gmt":"2026-10-27T12:58:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/815463\/"},"modified":"2026-10-27T12:58:09","modified_gmt":"2026-10-27T12:58:09","slug":"arnie-barney-review-dimwit-ant-double-act-from-maya-the-bee-are-on-mission-to-entertain-movies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/815463\/","title":{"rendered":"Arnie & Barney review \u2013 dimwit ant double-act from Maya the Bee are on mission to entertain | Movies"},"content":{"rendered":"

In 1912 in Germany, antisemitic writer Waldemar Bonsels published The Adventures of Maya the Bee, which later became a 1970s anime series in Japan called Maya the Honey Bee, and was later dubbed into English a couple of times, including for kids TV channel Nickelodeon in the 1990s and a bunch of films between 2014 and 2021<\/a>. Still with us? Recurring characters from the show include Arnie and Barney, a pair of dimwit ants, and now, at long last, they have their own spin-off movie.<\/p>\n

The film opens very much in media res, with a young female bee flying through outer space clutching a small pig and droplet of water the size of her head. She\u2019s being pursued aggressively by a handful of wasp-type creatures and a narrator solemnly intones: \u201cSometimes the most unlikely heroes \u2026 become legends.\u201d The bee then stops next to a couple of red ants and asks what they\u2019re doing. They are the narrators, they explain, but this his is all soon revealed as fantasy \u2013 the pair of ants are telling a story to a larger platoon of ants. Some exposition follows about the ants\u2019 mission: to find fresh water.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

This is fine as far as it goes, perhaps, but what a pr\u00e9cis can\u2019t convey is quite how staggeringly ugly and uninteresting the whole endeavour is. It starts with the character design: it\u2019s hard to imagine any but the most aesthetically starved children embracing this ant pair. Boy are they a chore to spend time with, both visually and in terms of the lacklustre script. Even if you are struggling for entertainment options you might want to do the kids a favour and skip this one.<\/p>\n

Arnie & Barney is in UK cinemas from 30 October<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In 1912 in Germany, antisemitic writer Waldemar Bonsels published The Adventures of Maya the Bee, which later became…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":815464,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[96,2839,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-815463","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-entertainment","tag-movies","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/815463","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=815463"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/815463\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/815464"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=815463"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=815463"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=815463"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}