PIXAR WINS ROUND ONE IN DIGITAL ANIMATION
Just when you thought that Antz would blow Disney out of the water, with animation that kills Pixar's "Toy Story", comes Pixar's latest, A Bug's Life. And what a great film this is. If Antz wasn't pushed ahead of A Bug's Life, people wouldn't have seen it after A Bug's Life. A Bug's Life is more colourful, adventurous and smarter - using the visual medium and ever improving technology to produce some fine humour as well as parody to entertain the adults. Its appeal is more universal than Antz, because it caters to people from the smallest of children to the old intellectuals. There's so much going on in some of the frames that the pace is almost frenetic at times, and this is because the technology has improved so much, that it can deliver so much more for the audience. I suspect that this film wasn't 100% animated (I would think that they used real leaves sometimes), but I still enjoyed the brighter colours of this film. The ants too were very expressive, and the eyes must have had many different contols because that's how the expression came through. The story line is simple enough, and has been done before in other films (there's touches of the 'three amigos' and 'the magnificent seven' to bits of the story line). However, the delivery of the story line and the characters will make this film one of the biggest merchandising hits since Toy Story. The voices too were cast brilliantly. With Antz, the brilliance comes through on the delivery of Woody Allen himself (and of course, the script was very good) and the supporting all star cast, which we can pick up very easily (many may find this a good feature because it adds to the perceived expression of the animated character). However, in A Bug's Life we have great stars who will not overshadow the magic of the film. There's Julia Louis Dreyfus as the female second in charge, and David Foley (from News Radio) as Flick, the ant with all the ideas who is dismissed as very strange for his 'stupid' ideas (coming from Pixar, I suspect that those computer animators identified with Flick as a nerd type - and again, the nerd bagging the chick is becoming so common place thanks to the influence of the computer revolution). Kevin Spacey, who I didn't even recognise as the voice of Hopper, does his job with the appropriate flair - I'm surprised that it's Mr Spacey. David Hyde Pierce is excellent as the stick (slim), whose character gets some of the best visual gags. The other great character is the slug - Heimlich. While he seems like a self obsessed and greedy character, the audience from the very beginning warms up to Heimlich's antics... and as they say, inside the slug lies a beautiful butterfly. Ian also told me that there are references to the original lost in space series with the 'drama' type ant of the flea circus being the voice of Dr Smith. By the end of its run, A Bug's Life will be one of the hits of 1998. The future of animation is looking brighter and brighter with each new picture that comes along. Hopefully the amazing animation in the trailer for Prince of Egypt will make that film a success. After Antz and a Bug's Life people might not say "but it's a cartoon" whenever someone suggests an animated film.
87/100