A BUG'S LIFE (1998) A Film Review by Ted Prigge Copyright 1998 Ted Prigge
Directors: John Lasseter and Andrew Stanton Writers: Don McEnery, Bob Shaw, and Andrew Stanton (story by John Lasseter, Bob Shaw, and Andrew Stanton) Starring: Dave Foley, Kevin Spacey, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Hayden Panettiere, Phyllis Diller, Richard Kind, David Hyde-Pierce, Joe Ranft, Denis Leary, Jonathan Harris, Madeline Kahn, Bonnie Hunt, Michael McShane, John Ratzenberger, Brad Garret, Roddy McDowell, Edie McClurg, Alex Rocco
"A Bug's Life" may not be "Toy Story," but it's more close than "Antz" was. I really liked "Antz," basically because, yes, it is clever and witty and intelligent (and it has the temerity to take a chance and put Woody Allen in the lead, perhaps the year's most inspired casting), but there was, in fact, something missing from it, and I'm the first to admit that. Maybe it's that it never totally lets go and takes off into real innocent fun - it's too obsessed with its Orwellian message to become totally engaging, and if it weren't for Woody Allen, it would have been just a really clever good-not-great flick.
"A Bug's Life" has a similar premise, and it also has Disney to insure that it's G-rated and not totally over kids' heads like "Antz" was (not a bad thing, believe me), but what it also has is a tone that's completely innocent even when it's also remaining perpetually clever. "Antz" is still the more witty film, and I love it for it, and "A Bug's Life" is more for general consumption, but it's also more entertaining. It broadens its horizons, and when it really moves from the ant colony, it really shows us a whole new world we've never seen before, and it's take on the evolution of bugs is a lot better than the one in "Antz." It's also light AND clever.
The visuals are, instead of earth tones, bright worldly colors, and still gives the amazing visual technology of "Antz" at least a worthy contender. The characters are also nicely realized - though watered-down for broad consumption, they still carry more wit than the contemporary Disney animated films. The lead character, Flik (voiced by Dave Foley), is nothing more than a slightly-less neurotic Z from "Antz," but Foley makes him nearly as engaging as Allen made Z. Instead of Gene Hackman playing the villain, we get the much more menacing Kevin Spacey as the lead grasshopper, the nicely-titled Hopper. And for the romantic lead, we don't get spacey Sharon Stone, but intelligent and hard-to-get Julia-Louis Dreyfuss, who doesn't even come around until the very final frames.
Not that the plot's really any better than the one in "Antz" - it's basically yet another redux of "The Seven Samurai," with an ant colony under the control of giant grasshoppers forcing them to produce a product for them or else. When Flik, a bone fide inventor, creates a time-conserving apparatus that accidentally destroys the season's donation, he puts them all in risk, and is sent away so that he won't screw anything up with the pretense that he is searching for help to fight the grasshoppers. He runs into a group of "warrirors" who are, unbeknownst to him, a group of carnival bugs, and they agree to help under similar false pretenses. These bugs are an equally wonderful assortment to anything in "Toy Story": foppish walking stick Slim (David Hyde-Pierce), German caterpillar Heimlich (Joe Ranft), quick-tempered and insecure male ladybug Francis (Denis Leary), pretentious praying mantis Manny (Jonathan Harris), his assistant butterfly Hypsy (Madeliene Kahn), spider Rosie (Bonnie Hunt), and two fleas, Tuck and Roll (Michael McShane), who speak in undiscernable jibberish.
The writers lightly touch on each bug's place in bug society and the malleability thereof while making a wisecracks at everything they can, and blowing the audience away with wild visual treats. Grasshoppers jumping in unison seems like a menacing earthquake. A small bird becomes an ominous mortal threat, whose usual mild-mannered squeal is a scream of death. The bug city is a modern-day metropolis, complete with fireflies temping as traffic lights and a fly sitting on the curb, holding out a cup, with a sign lying next to him that says "Kid tore off wings." And a rainstorm is like a giant flood, with each drop acting like a small bomb dropped at millions of miles per hour.
Around this, the Pixar animators stage several large set pieces, like a resuce mission halfway through that is as wild and entertaining as anything this year, and a wonderfully exciting action piece at the end, a chase scene at night through the labyrinthine branches of a small thicket. Meanwhile, each character gets the spotlight to be completely idisyncratic and interesting, something "Antz" couldn't do, and by the end, over the end credits, "A Bug's Life" pulls it's final punch, out clever-ing "Antz" with a series of incessantly hilarious faux-bloopers that come just at the right time, when those who leave immeadiately after the final frame of a film have left, and you can brag that you were one of the elite who stayed and got the full money's worth of entertainment.
Still, it's no "Toy Story." That film, maybe above any animated film I've ever seen, encompassed almost true perfection in story, character, and wit. It proved that it didn't need to brag about it's cutting edge technology to really soar (it's the least visually striking of the three computer animated films thus far, but is still the most satisfying), and created a perfect world of idiosyncratic delights and innocent fun. Yet "A Bug's Life," as well as "Antz," are still amazing films, and prove without doubt, that if you're gonna make a computer animated film, send it to the guys who created these three flicks, evne if they're not working under the same roof.
MY RATING (out of 4): ***1/2
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