A 10 year old boy named Lucas Nickle is tormented and bullied by a local bully, Steve, and takes out his rage on ants. He inflicts various tortures on them and their colony. The ants have had enough! An ant wizard named Zoc (Nicolas Cage) takes action and turns Lucas into an ant-sized kid! Zoc's girlfriend (Julia Roberts) ends up teaching Lucas morals under the command of the head ant (Meryl Streep). In learning to live like an ant, Lucas comes to respect the colony. Eventually, he feels learns his most important life-lesson of all: how to stand up for himself!