Antz

It’s interesting to know that right from the very beginning, the animation studio, DreamWorks was always meant to be a rival company to Disney. After a feud between Disney’s film division chairman, Jeffrey Katzenberg and CEO Michael Eisner, Katzenberg left Disney and would go onto co-found DreamWorks Pictures with Steven Spielberg and David Geffen, who proceeded to create their own animation division which they hoped would contend with Disney’s library. Shaping up to be just as much a personal feud as it was a commercial competition, Katzenberg developed projects he tried to pursue while still at Disney, which resulted in movies like Prince of Egypt, Chicken Run, Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas, and Army Ants, which was initially conceived in 1988 but never saw light under Disney’s banner and was revived under new management and later given the title of Antz. The most notable part of this conflict was that this film was set to contend with Pixar’ latest film, A Bug’s Life, which came out on the same year and also focused heavily on insects. Since both seemed eerily similar from the outset yet housed completely different plots and tones, which one did the bug movie better? Within a large ant colony, a worker ant named Z (voiced by Woody Allen) feels very insignificant in a colony of over a million that exists within a totalitarian society, resulting in an existential crisis. The one keeping this society in line is a general ant named Mandible (voiced by Gene Hackman) who believes in survival of the fittest and is planning to wipe out all the weak ants and start with a fresh slate, even planning to go around the Queen Ant (voiced by Anne Bancroft) to do so. After Z gets caught up in a battle between ants and termites and gets whisked away from the colony along with Princess Bala (voiced by Sharon Stone), the two slowly start to form a romance as they head towards Insectopia, a fabled place which claims to be a haven for all insects, only being forced to return to the nest in order to save the rest of the colony from Mandible’s tyranny. For a first movie from a fresh studio, Antz does a pretty good job highlighting the components that differentiate their work from Disney, as well as spotlight their general pros and cons when it comes to making animated movies. While nothing ground-breaking and its lack of attention as opposed to the more crowd-pleasing Pixar film, Antz has enough creative elements, good voice acting, and impressive for the time effects to make it worth a watch.

While both Antz and A Bug’s Life are constantly compared to one another due to the established feud and the hard to ignore factor that they were released extremely close to one another, they aren’t actually that similarly outside of their bug theme and the basest character set ups (a worker ant paired with a princess, that’s really about it).  While A Bug’s Life was more geared towards kids with a story along the lines of Seven Samurai, Antz goes for a much more adult audience with a story along the lines of 1984, which results in two entirely different atmospheres. Despite how it was advertised, Antz is not a kid’s film and doesn’t even really try to hide that component. While kids can watch it and there are of course elements that would appeal to that market like comic relief, goody cartoonish antics and the overall appeal of animation, the subject matter, style of comedy, less bright and poppy colors, and even character designs feel more tailored towards older kids and young teenagers, a demographic that was looking for something a bit rougher but still familiar, which this movie somewhat delivers on. The plot for this film actually works quite well with its premise and leads into some decent commentary, as by making this movie focused around a collective animal unit likes ants be about Communism, propaganda , politics of war, totalitarianism, exploitation of the working class for the benefit of the anointed strongest, and the mentality of individualism against survival of the fittest, actually flows really naturally within this type of society which is all about strength in groups as opposed to strength in one. It does a great job setting up how this world and how this society operates to the point where a lot of these cliched elements and character motivations, which would normally be seen as contrived and lazy, have a different meaning when connected to this environment. The actual screenplay for this film written by Todd Alcott, Chris Weitz and Paul Weitz is definitely more catered towards adults as not only is a very talk-heavy film with very little levity, but it also contains the soon-to-be familiar innuendos added an off-putting edge to this picture that would become a staple of certain factors of DreamWorks.  It’s not quite smart enough for these adult jokes to be that interesting, but they aren’t painful either, so it’s more an interesting testing of the waters. While the movie’s first act actually sets out its plot pretty nicely, things start to fall apart as soon once the leads set off on a journey outside the nest, as the pacing suddenly picks up really quickly and stuff just kinda starts happening without that much build-up coming before it. With newcomer directors, Eric Darnell and Tim Johnson behind the wheel, the later acts feel pretty disjointed from the rest of the movie to the point where even if they still fundamentally work within the narrative, it rushes past some elements so quickly that it doesn’t leave as much an impact as the first half did with its set-up.

The character’s feel like very recognizable cliches and it’s even hard to remember their names sometimes because of how weird their names can be or by how little they actually do, but they somehow work in this movie despite those issues. Its surprisingly easy to tell the characters apart visually because each character is designed to look unique from the other with their proportions, movements, and even facial structures. This mainly came from the actors being somewhat incorporated into the designs of their characters, so that they shared similar facial features, almost like an off shoot of rotoscope. The actors are also a reason why some of these characters work as the personality traits of their characters are really spot on to what these actors are so good at doing and you can clearly tell the team making this movie knew what they were doing when getting these actors. Woody Allen as the neurotic feels like a no brainier and he can pull that off seamlessly (probably because it’s just who he is) , Sharon Stone as the love interest is a little basic and can feel a little rom-comy, but never in an annoying sense, Gene Hackman as the villain seems a little one-note, but his plan within context does seem pretty diabolical and he does act it out accordingly, Sylvester Stallone as a  solider as well as Jennifer Lopez as one of the tough workers result in some memorable side characters, Dan Aykroyd as a snobby sophisticate wasp and Danny Glover as the supportive slightly battle-weary ant are fun cameos, all these roles fit perfectly for this actor. The only one that feels largely out of place is Christopher Walken as an assistant to the main villain, as for being such an over-the-top actor with a very recognizable acting style, his character is given nothing that would bring out his strongest qualities and it makes it feel like a pretty wasted casting choice. It’s not even that his acting is bad, it’s just very unmemorable which is something that should never be said about Christopher Walken.

The animation style can look a hint old by today’s standard but given the time that it came out and the fact that it was coming from a brand-new animation studio, it was seen as ground-breaking and impressive for the time, and some of that can still be seen today. The already mentioned differences between character is already a nice addition with the extenuated facial davits and eye placements helping shape a character, and the scale and size that they give to some of these environments still look pretty cool even if it’s not overwhelming. There’s not much color variety between the locations as it is a pretty dusty, earthy environment they are mostly in, but when it does get the chance to show itself off, it looks nice and even the ways in which the human world impacts this one is handled okay. It’s also nice that the film keeps size proportional between all the animals, allowing for a bigger variety in how these creatures look and interact, which in turn also leads to a few fun gags. The movie isn’t knee-slapping funny and even a lot of the dialogue isn’t that focused on making people laugh, but once and a while there’s something humorous that comes up, like how the ants are given their roles in life literally seconds after being born.

Both A Bug’s Life and Antz have their own pros and cons that make them their own product, and despite coming out around the same time and literally being a feud declaration between the two companies, they are different enough that outside of that, they don’t feel too much the same. A Bug’s Life has the more appealing art style and kid-friendly appeal, but Antz has far more interesting themes and better handling of its characters and world yet is not a movie that feels like its lasted in the memory of many people. It doesn’t really do enough to keep children’s attention in the same way something like A Bug’s Life would, but for DreamWorks’ first animated movie, there’s some good stuff here. The characters aren’t too bad, the animation works for the environment, the voice acting is perfectly cast, the commentary and political satire is surprisingly well-handled and fits really well within this environment, and it does show why Dreamworks could and would act as a competitor for the house that Walt built. If the second act was better paced and had time to stew in its ideas more, it could have been really good, but for what it is, it’s still a good flick to check out. Despite the surprisingly high insect body count, Antz is a small flick that actually leaves a bigger impression than expected.