Film Review #74: A Bug's Life

After the smash release of Toy Story, Pixar immediately went to work on their second feature, A Bug's Life.  Innocent enough, until a certain unhappy former Disney Exec decided to create his own animated movie about bugs, ants specifically.  It should come as a surprise to no one that most of DreamWork's first few films were a bit similar to past Disney and Pixar efforts, considering Jeffery Katzenberg was the one who greenlit most of the movies to begin with.  And while Antz is not too superior a film when compared to A Bug's Life, the differing styles of both films would set in stone the future of both animation giants as they would rise to depose Disney as the heads of the animation world.  While one utilized more adult themes and more well-known actors (Woody Allen, Gene Hackman, Sylvester Stallone, Christopher Walken), the other was centered more around family friendly adventures and fun colors.

Plot: A large colony of ants needs to build up their food stock as an offering to the local grasshoppers for their "protection".  But one ant, a quirky inventor named Flik, decides to spend his time inventing ways to maximize production over simply doing what the others do.  When one of his inventions accidentally knocks all of their food for the offering into the water, the grasshoppers threaten to take all of the food on the island.  Flik decides to go off in search of bigger bugs to help rid the colony of grasshoppers for good.

Upon finding more bugs, Fllik hopes that they will be able to help him.  But the new bugs come with a catch: their not warriors, but circus bugs.  Flik needs to not only convince the bugs to be strong and fight, but also prevent his colony from learning the truth themselves.

What's Bad?: The film, like I mentioned above, is geared more towards children than Antz.  The film isn't as groundbreaking as Toy Story was, and it seemed to gear itself to being a simple children's story.  And while that isn't entirely bad, I expected a film up to par with Toy Story.

The main cast of bugs, particularly the ants, aren't that interesting.  Only Flik and the royal family are fleshed out and receive proper character development.  Maybe, in the long run, this flaw helps the film out, but more on that in the next segment.

What's Good?: The supporting cast is where the story's strong points are.  The grasshoppers are nearly as amusing as the hyenas from The Lion King, while Kevin Spacey is in yet another great villain role as the main grasshopper.  But I really like the circus bugs.  My particular favorite is the obese caterpillar that has a hilarious German accent.

The animation is also pretty damn impressive.  The amount of scope and detail that they give each scene, particularly the opening of the film.  In most non-fairy tale animated films, the opening scene is used to often showoff the skills of the animators and set the tone for the story.  For instance, "Circle of Life" in The Lion King, or the opening scene of The Prince of Egypt.  This film does not waste time bringing us into the world of the ant colony, but it also reminds us that there are people in this world, often cutting to show that the bug bar in the city is really inside an empty can of soup.  That's clever.

Overall: A Bug's Life, despite being geared a bit more towards children than Toy Story and most of the succeeding films would be, is still a very good film.  And it wasn't one of the Pixar films that was heavily marketed into the ground.  It's a pretty food film with a pretty good cast and a pretty good story.  Some things are just better than others.  And, in a year where the scale of animation began to tip away from Disney and lean towards Pixar and DreamWorks, A Bug's Life kept the scale leaning away from Disney and preparing a bright future for the small computer company called Pixar.

Final Grade: A-