I'm dying to see this one, yeah yeah I know... I said that yesterday, but I'm serious. I'm going to try to finish my A BUG'S LIFE review at some point tonight, though I may fall asleep before I can get to it. This review sort of mirrors my feelings based on the script. I loved the socio-political part of the story, the empowerment of the individual over a totalitarian militarist regime. And that was the last thing I was expecting to find in the script. Well, here's the review...
I just returned to a showing of 'Antz' in downtown Boston, and an hour later, I am still in awe of not only the quality of entertainment and animation, but also the depth and quality of the characters and plot. To begin with, this movie would stand alone for pure entertainment value. The animation is top-quality, and the panoramic scenes of the inside of the colony and of the outside "insectopia" are epic.
It's charm and humor run along the same line of, but one-up Toy Story. There is action, including a war scene, the "colony" against the termites, who's intensity mirrored of 'Saving Pvt. Ryan', but the gore and bloodshed was tremendously toned-down for obvious reasons.
The supporting characters, as in most animation flicks these days, provide the laughs, but not in the "sidekick"-y way that is so cliched these days. These characters actually mean something to the plot, and their humor reflects what is happening at that moment. A group of young, probably nine or ten year old kids sat next to me, and they seemed to love it from start to finish, most sitting on the edge of their seat.
However, what brought me to standing applause at the end was the intelligence and depth of the story. Antz is a tale of the a single soul lost in the complex workings of the society around him. Z, the lead ant, believably evolves from a drone to who he thought he could never be. The social structure of the "colony" was elaborately expressed, as we see at one moment the drones working away at the soil, and the next, an upper-class tea party with the royal family displaying their wealth. There is even a labor strike in the middle, returned to order by the overpowering general (the bad guy, Z's nemesis).
Here's to Dreamworks for two epic-quality films back-to-back. This should last til Christmas, no problem.
-- fuukaa
