Anthomation Assesses A Bug’s Life

Howdy guys, Anthomaton here. Today I shall review the ant movie people tend to enjoy more: A Bug’s Life.

A Bug’s Life is a 1998 animated film produced by Pixar Animation. It was the second film produced by Pixar. Directed by John Lasseter and co-directed and written by Andrew Stanton. During production, a controversial public feud erupted between Steve Jobs and Lasseter of Pixar and DreamWorks co-founder Jeffrey Katzenberg due to the parallel production of his similar film Antz, which was released the same year.

The film was released on November 20, 1998, and grossed $363 million in receipts. It was the first film to be digitally transferred frame-by-frame and released on DVD, and has been released multiple times on home video.

Flik (Dave Foley) is an inventive ant who’s always messing things up for his colony. His latest mishap was destroying the food stores that were supposed to be used to pay off grasshopper Hopper (Kevin Spacey). Now the strong-arming insect is demanding that the ants gather double the food — or face annihilation. To avert disaster, Flik goes on a journey to recruit fighters to defend the colony. When he meets a band of high-flying circus insects, he thinks he’s found his salvation.

The story can feel a bit vanilla, but it still holds as being fun and entertaining. The protagonist who doesn’t fit in is nothing too original, but they display it in a way that can still be humorous and full of heart. My favorite part is when Francis, a man ladybug who is constantly mistaken for a female, gets in a confrontation with two flies and eventually a fight breaks out between them. The delivery of line givens can bring out some genuine lifes. Which I think sums up the plot of the movie perfectly. It may not have the strongest of foundations, but it is built up to be something worthwhile.

For the time this movie came out, the animation is still impressive to this day. Back in 1998, when the film was released, the complexity in which characters and environments could be animated on computers was still pretty limited. Given what Pixar had to work with, I would say it was a job well done. The characters move in a visually pleasing way, being both abstract but too cartoonish. The environments are well conceived, from the ant hill in which the main characters reside, to the bug city, to the grasshopper village. The one complaint I would have is that the rendering on the environments and characters is still not up to par with most of the Pixar classics. Like any other film from Pixar, the visual flare was definitely there.

The characters can be stationary at first glance, but are enjoyable and likeable due to some personality-filled voicing performances. There is Flik (voiced by Dave Foley), an inventive, but mostly accident-prone, ant. There’s Hopper (voiced by Kevin Spacey), the ruthless leader of the grasshopper colony. There’s Princess Atta (voiced by Julia Louis-Dreyfus), the soon-to-be queen of the colony. And then there are the circus bugs mistaken for warrior bugs, including a male ladybug named Francis (voiced by Denis Leary), a plump caterpillar named Heimlich (voiced by Joe Ranft, longtime creator at Pixar), and a walking still named Slim (voiced by David Hyde Pierce). All of these characters bring their unique persona to the screen thanks to great acting performances.

A Bug’s Life may not be a true Pixar classic, but it still holds up as a solid animated film. With a story that’s predictable, but entertaining, animation that still holds up very well, and characters that have their own spunk, this is a film that should definitely be enjoyable for kids and even the parents can get a couple of laughs out of it. If you have little kids, I would recommend this film over Antz (1998), just so they don’t get dramatized by the termite battle.

Score:

7.5/10