Picking on Pixar's A Bug's Life, I feel like a bullying kid refracting the sun through a magnifying glass onto an anthill. As with Pixar's initial computer-animated feature, Toy Story, the animation is seamless, the voice performances are flawless, and Randy Newman's score complements the story perfectly. And yet the movie isn't the eye-popping surprise that Toy Story was. This story of an oppressed colony of ants is far more (you should pardon the expression) down to earth.
The story's main ant, a ne'er-do-well named Flik (voice of Dave Foley) helps his colony thwart a bullying group of grasshoppers led by the evil Hopper (Kevin Spacey). Flik finds his helpmates in a low-talent circus troupe that gets roped into helping the ants through some miscommunication on Flik's part.
That's about all there is to the story. Most of the movie's fun comes from the sly voicework (best is "Frasier's" persnickety David Hyde Pierce) and some low-key, throwaway jokes. Toy Story had much of the same appeal, yet is primary storyline was rich and imaginative--it made you look at the world of kids' toys from a fresh perspective.
Ant colonies notwithstanding, the Bug's Life story is very routine. We know perfectly well that the hero will bungle everything he tries until the story calls for him to come through. Some might carp that the movie seems familiar only because Antz beat this movie to the same territory. Yet it shares the same character problem as Antz: Why should we care about a bunch of ants with borrowed personalities? Antz was a standard Woody Allen comedy with insects instead of New Yorkers; A Bug's Life has the standard Disney "repressed hero rising to save the day" formula.
The movie is far more enjoyable than the in-jokey Antz, yet A Bug's Life lacks the sense of wonder that the first Pixar feature inspired. One giveaway is the latter movie's lightning-fast pace, so fast that some of the jokes and exposition are unclear. A Bug's Life is so intent on outdoing its predecessor, it's afraid of stopping for a moment lest the kiddies get bored.
A Bug's Life is rated G.
Submitted by: Steven Bailey http://pages.hotbot.com/movies/skad13
Steven Bailey, a movie reviewer for The Beaches Leader newspaper in Jacksonville Beach, Florida, has movie reviews posted in The Internet Movie Database at: http://www.imdb.com/M/reviews_by?Steven+Bailey
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/ Before you buy.
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