ANTZ ** (out of four) -a review by Bill Chambers (wchamber@netcom.ca) (Toronto Film Festival Coverage! Trivia! Screen and DVD reviews! Lots of other forgettable crap! FILM FREAK CENTRAL http://www.geocities.com/~billchambers/ Enjoy!)
ztarring the voicez of Woody Allen, Zharon Ztone, Gene Hackman, Zylvezter Ztallone zcreenplay by Todd Alcott and Chris Weitz directed by Eric Darnell and Tim Johnzon
Darnell, Johnson, Dan Aykroyd, Jane Curtin, Danny Glover, Jennifer Lopez, and Christopher Walken file into the sweaty, crowded Tudor Room of Toronto's Four Seasons to discuss the Dreamworks/PDI production ANTZ, a computer-generated movie that took two-and-a-half years to complete. ANTZ will beat the not dissimilar Disney/Pixar project A Bug's Life to screens by a month-that's why Jeffrey Katzenberg-Michael Eisner's spurned (business) lover, and the K in Dreamworks SKG-is there, tucked between some cameras and journalists: he's gloating. Should he be?
This is the first time this partial cast has been together; most of their dialogue was recorded separately. All were cast on the basis of their reputations. Said Darnell: "No auditions for these guys." A discussion of the liberties afforded by voice acting goes something like this:
Curtin: "No facade."
Aykroyd: "No worries about weight loss."
Walken: "The animators kind of duplicate your body language."
Lopez: "I found it hard!... [I prefer] to use my whole body!"
Aykroyd (who plays a wasp): "They got the length of my stinger too short." (Laughs.)
Woody Allen was cast very early on, which meant "we could really write for him and stage for him," said Darnell. Perhaps it's no surprise that Woody Allen's ‘performance' is the best thing about ANTZ; the movie begins with his character, "Z", kvetching on a psychiatrist's couch about such insect dilemmas as being the middle child of two-and-a-half-million siblings. Z knows there is something more to life than burrowing through dirt tunnels. It's Deconstructing Harry for the lunchbox set.
Z, a worker ant, embarks on a journal of self-discovery: having fallen in love with an ant princess (Stone), Z disguises himself as a soldier at war, just to see her again. (Huh?) Thanks in large part to his cowardice, Z is the only survivor of the Starship Troopers-like termite battle that transpires. Lionized by his peers, Z's true identity is discovered by the mean general (Hackman); Z subsequently takes the princess hostage and heads for the hills. Together, Z and his reluctant guest search for the mythical "Insectopia", with pursuers not far behind.
ANTZ' biggest problem is its lack of focus: one minute it's about a war, the next about Insectopia, the next about the general's dastardly plot against the entire ant colony. Z is looking for something "better", and without giving too much away, he basically finds it halfway through the film...yet the proceedings continue. Hackman's villain is uninspired and, frankly, two-dimensional, like some reject from Dreamworks' other military-themed cartoon Small Soldiers. The whole film is a bit too mean-spirited, also. (With the words like "damn" and "hell" liberally tossed around by the ANTZ characters, I should be pleased as punch-it's the lack of humour with which these curses are delivered that I found startling.) Also, even in animated-insect form, the romance that blossoms between Woody and Sharon is highly suspect.
What about the look of the film? Some scenes in ANTZ are gorgeous, like the tidal wave, or the establishing scenes of the colony. Others play out in dull shot-reverse-shot, like the non-interactive sequences of a CD-ROM game. I wasn't keen on Z's appearance-while other ants resembled their human counterparts (Walken and Glover especially), PDI has toiled to make Z look as un-Woody as possible. The result is an aesthetically unappealing creation that might feel physically mismatched with any actor's voice. (And why is it the characters are expressionistic while the backgrounds are super-realistic?)
When confronted about the competing A Bug's Life at the ANTZ press conference, Aykroyd did some of the talking: "Different story. Lotta heart in this one." Lotta? No. Some? Sure. Ultimately, it is difficult to mine warmth from a story about an ant colony; worse, the only real guffaws come from Allen doing Allen. (Cheap, cheap laughs.) ANTZ feels computer-generated in every way.
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews