DIRECTORS
John
Lasseter
Andrew Stanton
SCREENWRITERS
Andrew
Stanton
Donald McEnery
Bob Shaw
STORY
BY
John
Lasseter
Andrew Stanton
Joe Ranft
PRODUCERS
Darla K. Anderson
Kevin Reher
CINEMATOGRAPHER
Sharon Calahan
MUSIC
Randy Newman
EDITOR
Lee Unkrich
CAST (VOICES)
Dave Foley (Flik)
Kevin Spacey (Hopper)
Julia Louis-Dreyfus (Princess Atta)
Hayden Panettiere (Princess Dot)
Phyllis Diller (Queen)
Richard Kind (Molt)
David Hyde Pierce (Slim)
Joe Ranft (Heimlich)
Denis Leary (Francis)
Madeline Kahn (Gypsy)
Bonnie Hunt (Rosie)
John Ratzenberger (P.T. Flea)
Brad Garrett (Dim)
Roddy McDowall (Mr. Soil)
MPAA rating: G
Running
time: 96m
U.S. release: November 25, 1998
Video availability: VHS - DVD
Official website
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Perhaps
A Bug's Life would play better if if hadn't come so soon
after Antz,
but not much better. Though the films were clearly developed
and made around the same time, this new Disney/Pixar animated
feature almost feels like a copy of the earlier DreamWorks movie.
A Bug's Life has the same wisecracking dialogue, the same
basic plot (a wimpy ant helps his colony defeat a vicious tyrant,
though here the villain is a grasshopper instead of a military
ant), a similar look, a comparable theme (in both, an evil character
says something like "Ideas are dangerous"), even some
of the same gags. And, like Antz, this film doesn't even
have musical numbers -- a surprising departure for Disney animated
movies.
The problem is that, even if Antz didn't exist, A Bug's
Life would still be eye-catching but immediately forgettable.
This is the second feature by John Lasseter, who directed Disney/Pixar's
wildly popular Toy Story, which left me cold. Halfway
through A Bug's Life, I began to yearn for the relative
simplicity of Toy Story. The movie is always teeming with
movement and color, but you never quite forget that the insect
heroes are ready-made toys. The characters in Antz were
like wiry action figures; the Bug's Life menagerie are
more like Beanie Babies.
The hero is Flik (voice by NewsRadio's Dave Foley), a
dreamer whose schemes don't impress his fellow ants, who are
too busy gathering food for seasonal offerings to the fascistic
grasshoppers. Led by the malicious Hopper (Kevin Spacey, whose
voice work here lacks his usual deadpan cool), the grasshoppers
have terrorized the ants into keeping them well-fed. Flik has
an idea: He'll leave the colony and search for bigger bugs to
help the ants fight their oppressors. He finds a group of rowdy
critters he thinks are warrior bugs, but are actually circus
performers: a black widow (Bonnie Hunt), a macho ladybug (Denis
Leary, not as funny as you'd expect), a plump and bumbling caterpillar
(Joe Ranft), and so on.
What follows is all very cutesy and lightweight, without the
verbal wit of Antz or the visual splendor of James
and the Giant Peach. The landscapes, framed in ostentatious
widescreen (for a movie about bugs?), are exquisitely detailed,
and a few of the touches have comic ingenuity. But again, as
with Toy Story, I felt both locked out of the narrative
and locked inside the claustrophobic, untouched-by-human-hands
look of the movie. John Lasseter doesn't really create a world
and let you enter it. He programs a world and then surrounds
you with it, aggressively.
The plot, involving the creation of a fake bird meant to scare
the grasshoppers away, leads nowhere. It's as if the moviemakers
needed a way to get the other ants involved in their own destiny
-- otherwise this is a movie about characters who can't handle
their problems and have to recruit outside forces. (Nobody points
out that, having been scared off, the grasshoppers will probably
come back again.) A Bug's Life doesn't merit much enthusiasm
or indignation; it just skitters across your consciousness, leaving
no traces except a vague depression. A lot of people put in a
lot of hours on this, and for what? The movie will certainly
sell toys and hamburgers, but it won't endure as a work of fantasy.
For that, it needs a vision that extends beyond the Disney boardroom. |
