In the valleys of France, a family of ladybugs has their first litter and raises them until they are ready to become independent. The childish Toofette and a group of flies often bully Cox, who is one of the litter. During one of these fights, Cox attempts to fly back to his family, but as they pursue him, he lands in a crevice and loses a wing. Unable to fly or locate his family, Cox takes shelter in a tin which is part of an abandoned picnic. The next morning, Cox awakens as bugs have raided the picnic and carry away the spoils. A foraging patrol of black ants finds the picnic and begins to carry the tin with Cox still inside. They allow him to join them after he protects them from a hungry green lizard on route to their anthill. On their journey, Cox befriends Mandible, the leader of the black ants.
The ants encounter a patrol of red ants and their leader, the dictator Butor, who try to stop them to get their food. The black ants try to give them a sugar cube as a peace offering, but the red ants pursue them to get the rest of the sugar. The black ants escape by riding the tin down an embankment and into a river, with the red ants pursuing them in a soda can. At the rapids, Cox falls overboard and the ants rescue him from a pike named Boboche. As they go over a waterfall and the tin washes ashore, the soda can and Boboche sink to the bottom of the river. While the red ants escape, Boboche gets stuck in the sand and suffocates to death. The black ants pick up the sugar cubes and start hauling them back to their nest. After finding the tin empty, Butor and his patrol continue to follow them. However, Butor's troops flee to avoid being hit by a car, leaving Butor to follow the black ants to their anthill and return to his colony to report to his queen and get reinforcements. Meanwhile, his patrol returns home to rejoin his armies.
While traveling to the black ant's territory, Cox meets another family of ladybugs and tries to join them. He falls in love with one of the females, but since he cannot fly, he decides to stay with the ants as his new family. Eventually, they arrive at the territory, where Mandible invites him to join the colony and they present the sugar cubes to their queen. At midnight, Cox dreams of flying with both families and his girlfriend, but despite regaining some of his strength, he is still unable to fly. The next morning, Butor and his patrol, the queen, and the red ant colony lay siege to the black ant nest. When the black ants use their last remaining match to light a firework to fend off the red ants, Cox remembers that there was a matchbox at the picnic and, now able to fly again, escapes into the forest to retrieve it.
At the picnic area, Cox finds the matchbox, but before he can fly back with it, a black spider runs off with the matchbox to its dollhouse home. Cox follows him into the house, where a frog named Jean-Paul tries to eat them. The duo fight back and Jean-Paul is seemingly killed after the house topples onto him. After bonding with the spider, Cox persuades him to give him the matches and sets out with them back to the nest. Along the way, he saves his lover, who has reached independence and has left her family, from Toofette's gang, who are killed after a chase ends in them being hit by a car.
Cox returns to the besieged fortress, and with the matches, the black ants light up their arsenal of fireworks to fight back against the red ants. The explosions start a wildfire in the forest, which drives the red ant colony away, with Butor swearing revenge. A fire and rescue plane patrol arrives and extinguishes the wildfire, saving Cox and the black ant colony but flattening the nest in the process. In the aftermath, the colony begins rebuilding, while Cox returns to the meadow to raise his new family with his partner. A few years later, they return to the newly rebuilt ant nest and Cox and his old friend watch the sunset. In a mid-credits scene, the ant who was storing the objects used to defeat the red ants manages to complete a number sliding puzzle.
Home media
Minuscule was released on both DVD and Blu-ray in France on 26 August 2014.[6][7] It was later released in a Blu-ray collection together with its sequel, Minuscule - Mandibles from Far Away, on 5 November 2019.[8]
