A Bug's Life (1998)
Directed by John Lasseter (Toy Story), and Andrew Stanton (A Story)
Written by Andrew Stanton, Don McEnery (Hercules), and Bob Shaw (Hercules)
Featuring the voices of: Dave Foley ("Newsradio"), Kevin Spacey (LA Confidential), Julia Louis-Dreyfus ("Seinfeld"), Hayden Panettiere (The Object of my Affection), Phyillis Diller ("The Bold and the Beautiful"), Richard Kind ("Spin City"), David Hyde Pierce ("Frasier"), Joe Ranft (Toy Story), Dennis Leary (Wag the Dog), Johnathan Harris ("Lost in Space"), Madaline Kahn (Clue), Bonnie Hunt (Jumanji)
As reviewed by James Brundage
Well, the battle of the bugs is finally over and I think, cash wise, that Disney will come out on top once again. After all, there is such a thing a customer loyalty when it comes to kids and animated movies and whatever they see at McDonalds (Disney) seems to be their drug of choice. Sadly, it has to be ours.
A Bug's Life is about a colony of Ants who refuse to give their food over to the locusts (actually the film's main character, Flick (the Leonardo da Vinci of Ants (he'd cut an ear off if he had one), messes things up for them at the beginning by knocking over the altar the ants give the grasshoppers food on). Having to meet double-quota by the end of fall, the powers that be send Flick away on a false mission to get larger bugs to help them defeat the grasshoppers.
So Flick's out of the way and they're working their tails (if they had em) off to get enough food for the grasshoppers and them. But Flick ends up mistaking some circus bugs for warriors (due to the temper of Francis (Dennis Leary), and comes back with them. They find out what he actually wants, decide to leave, but end up staying after saving one of the Queen ant's daughters, Dot, from being eaten by a bird (who has a roar that sounds like a T-rex from Jurassic Park). Why? They got applause, and they suck at being circus bugs so they'll be narcisstic and get appreciation any way they can.
So everyone, under the guidance of the genius ant Flick, bands together to defeat the grasshoppers while developing characters, making cheap jokes, and laughing all around.
The sad thing about this year's battle of the bugs was that neither film could make it the right for both ages, like Pixar's earlier film Toy Story and the rather intelligent short Geri's Game, which everyone got to watch as A Bug's Life started up. This one catered specifically to the younger generation, which is fine for them but dissapoints me, because I haven't been five for a long time. Antz catered to us but had our children staring with a giant "huh"? Look on their faces. I'm saddenned by the both of them, as much as I personally loved Antz, because they've all gotten so caught up in making the buck that they've forgotten that they have to appeal to both kids and adults.
I thought both were funny, I thought both had excellent computer animation, and I think both will do moderately well. But if they could have only focused on their target audience (families), then they would have done a helluva lot better.
Movie Reviews by James Brundage
Movie Reviews starting with "B"
Related Reviews:
Don McEnery:
Berge Garabedian's Review of Hercules
Bob Shaw:
Berge Garabedian's Review of Hercules
Kevin Spacey:
James Brundage's Review of The Negotiator
Berge Garabedian's Review of The Negotiator
James Brundage's Review of LA Confidential
Sridhar Prasad's Review of LA Confidential
James Brundage's Review of The Usual Suspects
Sridhar Prasad's Review of The Usual Suspects
Hayden Panettiere:
Berge Garabedian's Review of Object of my Affection
Dennis Leary: