Directed by Eric Darnell and Lawrence Gutterman
Running time 83 mins
Certificate PG
Well, here we are again in the world of "two films, one idea".
It happens all the time, so don't worry about it.
Antz is slightly more controversial than most, though. When movies with a similar theme crop up in the same season, the excuse is usually that there's just between a collision of ideas. Take last year's Volcano and Dante's Peak, or this summer's double-whammy of asteroid flicks, Deep Impact and Armageddon. Coincidences happen. The rumor mill has been in serious overdrive over this one, as Dreamworks' boss Jeffrey Katzenberger was at Disney when they first suggested the idea of an animated movie about insects. True or not, the end result is that, while Disney are hard at work on their version of The Magnificent Seven with compound eyes known as A Bug's Life, Dreamworks have released the second fully CGI film of all time in Antz.
Much has been made of the presence of an all-star cast for the voices of the animated insects. Sharon Stone, Christopher Walken, Gene Hackman, Sylvester Stallone, Jennifer Lopez, Jane Curtin and Anne Bancroft: it could almost be a Woody Allen movie. Well, in a way it is, as Woody in fact plays the lead. Actually, one could almost imagine the younger Woody making an all-star movie about ants himself, back in the seventies before Interiors and when he thought nothing of dressing up as a sperm for a laugh. Here he plays Z-4195, a worker ant in New York (even when he's a member of the order hymenopterous, he still can't get out of the tri-boro area). Ants serve the colony in their own way: workers work, soldiers soldier and the queen breeds. That's the way it's always been and always will be.
Yeah, right. Of course it's time for a revolution. Z may be the smallest, weediest ant around but he's fed up with conformity. He steps out of the normal rule of law in a society built around control and ends up meeting the princess Bala, voiced by Sharon Stone. He attempts to impress her and, in a manner that would have done the script of Bananas proud, accidentally becomes a war hero. Unfortunately, he's in great danger of accidentally overturning the plans of Gene Hackman's General Mandible, a militaristic ego-maniac hell-bent on destroying the colony to create a new master race of ants: all soldiers, no weakling workers.
Antz will teach you nothing about real ants. In fact, if you do have even a basic background knowledge you'll be entertained by the fact that, as a wingless worker, Z is actually an infertile woman, which goes a long way to confirming some ideas I've always held about Woody Allen. They may look like bugs but they're really little people. The tool use and the fingers may be a clue. It does, however, have an interesting political sub-text. Whilst most cartoons, especially those of Disney, have become synonymous with making a moral point about honesty and truth, Antz is a commentary upon the nature of society. I'm not over-reaching here to suggest that Mandible represents the evils of militaristic fascism and that Z's story is that of a bug that discovers that he isn't just there for society, society is there for him. That an individual can retain that which is unique about themselves but still work towards a more equal and unified society sounds daringly like socialism to me. Pretty daring for a major film release and far more successful in its discussion of fascist politics than the dreadful alleged "satire" Starship Troopers It's not sufficient that it spoofs a supposedly "mature" film for kid's entertainment but that it beats the movie at its own game seems a bit harsh.
For those of you not wanting a Marxist dialectic, there's still a fine and fun movie in here. Allen, shedding the dark and destructive neuroses of his recent films, placed the emphasis here on wisecracking rather than just wise. His opening scene with an ant psychologist is some of his best stand-up material this decade. What's miraculous is that he doesn't run the show. Strangely Sylvester Stallone, who spent many years attempting to break into comedy with Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot, Oscar and Over The Top (wait. Was that supposed to be funny?) is truly winning as Z's best buddy Weaver, the gung-ho and remorselessly cheerful soldier ant, whose perpetual optimism is vaguely reminiscent of Carrot the city guard in the Discworld novels.
Antz does suffer from one insurmountable problem and that is design. Although Pacific Data Image have done a fantastic job of distinguishing between the soldiers and the workers, there are moments in which the major characters become a little bit indistinguishable. Face shape and structure varies enormously, whilst still retaining enough points of similarity to never let one forget that they are insects, but there are still times at which the audience has to wait for a character to open their mandibles before they can tell who's who. Ah, hell, everybody's a bug, whatcha gonna do?
That's a narrative point and a clear failing of the movie. Whilst extremely smart and wonderfully plotted, with some immensely glorious star turns, for a movie that has so much to say about the nature of the individual in society it lets character get away from it occasionally. Bala and Z shift from an antagonistic relationship to all lovey-dovey too quickly: indeed, there's no good reason why one should ever believe that Bala has stopped being a spoilt brat.
But I'll be realistic. Antz isn't going to attract an audience that's bothered about narrative integrity. People want to see great CGI and hear some good comedy lines. That's precisely what they'll get. Technically, this leaves the only competition to date, Toy Story, standing, but that's what three years of technical development gives you. Whereas the state of the art in 1995 meant that the reflective surfaces and simple lines of plastic toys were the ideal subject for cutting edge animation, the improvements in the skills of the animators and the power of the machines means hat 'real' surfaces can be depicted. Finally scenes have been created that could be model shots the end result being far more like claymation but without the traditional limits of size and number of components. The scale of some scenes is staggering, with the whole screen alive with millions of ants, scurrying and working. The vast ranks of soldier ants marshaled for battle with the termites are astounding, while the comedy set piece of a wrecking ball constructed solely of willing workers is an astonishing feat of design, programming and direction.
Unfortunately, the mechanism by which it is all strung together is disappointing. Allen's great, Stallone is hilarious and Stone is sensual: the effects are splendid: but this is the film that anyone could have made. If you were asked to come up with a script for a cartoon about ants, you'd have a worker falling in love with a princess, going on to make a point about the individual in a regimented society and then facing down the soldier ants. As for the events out in the big world, where hidden dangers lurk around every pebble and behind every blade of grass, not only is this predictable but it references too heavily the events outside of the house in Toy Story. Considering that it's only the second full CGI feature to date, one would have expected more clear blue water between the two.
Go expecting fun. Just don't go expecting a great film. Plus, I have to say, I'm looking forward to A Bug's Life slightly more than I was anticipating this.
RMW