Jared's Pick - Movie Reviews: Antz

Antz

Animation offers the ultimate in special effects; you can see or do absolutely anything, limited only by the imagination, but animation has a bad rap. It's for kids, right? Sure, adults are dragged along and so Disney throws them a bone in the form of a joke or two, but most full-length animation films are geared toward the under-12 audience. I've been eagerly awaiting the day when an animation studio releases an imaginative, intelligent film strictly for adults. Antz isn't quite bold enough to be that film, but it's close. If your kids want to drag you to this movie, go - not because they'll get a kick out of it, but because you will.

Antz is the tale of a worker ant named Z, who feels stifled by the group mentality of the colony and wants to express his individualism. Sounds a little hokey until you realize the ant is voiced by Woody Allen, whose neurotic persona permeates the humor of the film and brings it to life. "I've got a great therapist," says Z. "He helped me discover my inner maggot."

Z runs into the colony's princess at a bar and romances her, but she is betrothed to the colony's war colonel; Z convinces the princess to run away with him, and the colonel (voiced with obvious malevolent relish by Gene Hackman) goes nuts. Seems he has evil plans for the princess (voiced by Sharon Stone), and Z's actions not only spoil his designs on the princess, but also spawn revolt in the colony as the worker ants rise up against tyranny. "The workers control the means of production!" cries one ant during the revolt. Show me another kids' movie that makes jokes based on The Communist Manifesto. This is excellent.

The comedy and writing throughout the movie is all like this, referencing Dr. Strangelove, Animal Farm and Freud, heavily influenced by the sardonic, self-deprecating humor of Woody Allen. Z points out that Antz is "a story of boy meets girl, boy likes girl, boy changes underlying social structure." As Z pretends to be a soldier ant to get closer to the princess, he is forced to go to war against some neighboring termites, where he tries to convince the other soldiers that instead of war, they should influence the termites' political process with campaign contributions. The kids will still enjoy the visuals, but the dialogue is clearly, refreshingly for adults.

And the visuals are stunning. Antz, created by DreamWorks studios, takes the computer animation pioneered by Toy Story and ratchets it up about four notches. Details are piled on until the miniature wold is bigger than life, with shadows and intricate facial expressions that flesh out the backgrounds and characters. The computer animation is smooth and lifelike, with almost incomprehensible attention to detail, and makes minor details realistic.

For example: I remember watching Honey, I Shrunk The Kids and being irritated that the microscopic kid was splashing about in a cereal bowl instead of floating on top of the surface tension as the laws of physics would dictate. A minor quibble, but it's details like that which bring your disbelief crashing down like a stone - the beauty of animation is that there are no limits. Z and the princess share a drop of water and hold it just as a real ant would, like a ball.

The war scene with the termites is graphic and intense, and may be too much for very young children, and as I mentioned, the bulk of the humor will go far over their heads. There are also no stupid sidekicks for Z, something the kids raised on Disney may find puzzling. Still, they'll follow the story line well enough and find the eye candy exciting enough to enjoy Antz, but for once, you'll probably have more fun than them.

- Jared O'Connor

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