A Bug's Life 1998

A colony of ants has been accustomed to gathering food for themselves and their bullies the grasshoppers for years. When an ant, Flik (Foley), that thinks outside of the box comes along and starts messing things up for the ants and grasshoppers, so Princess Atta (Louis-Dreyfus) sends Flik away on a mission to find warriors to help save the colony from the wrath of the grasshoppers. Flik eventually comes across a group of bugs, unknown to him that they are circus bugs, and brings them back to the colony. They all start devising a plan to scare away the grasshoppers when they find out the truth and send them away including Flik for betraying them. Just as they leave the grasshoppers come back for the final confrontation. One of the younger ants sneaks away and finds the group of exiled circus bugs and brings them back to help. Everything goes down at the ant colony and the ants and circus bugs end up defeating the evil grasshoppers and send them running away screaming. The ants and circus bugs then live happily ever after.

This was the second PIXAR film in the line-up of their never-ending masterpieces. Thus it had to live up to its big brother’s standards and while it was a really fascinating film, in my opinion it did not scratch the Toy Story surface. However, A Bug’s Life was still an incredible film. The animation bar for PIXAR was beginning to be set with this since it was the second of PIXAR’s films. There were a whole host of impressive things the animators did with this film. One of the biggest things to come from A Bug’s Life was all the textures. Almost everything looked how it should in regards to its texture i.e. the dirt the bugs lived on, the grasshoppers’ exoskeletons, even the bird’s feathers. The colors and shapes were a lot more vivid and diverse in this film which helped the progress. Also since it was set outside instead of inside of a bedroom the animators were forced to figure out how the natural light sources would work within the film.

I would actually have to say that the most amazing thing about this film was the uncanny interactions between characters. That was so interesting how they had a plethora of entomologic creatures and how they all moved and acted as if these bugs were actually real humanoid characters. Apparently the designers took away two legs from the ants and added two to the grasshoppers just to make things easier to work with for the ants and to make the grasshoppers seem more intimidating. As amazing as the characters were visually they would have been nothing without the incredibly talented cast that filled the vocal void. Is there anything funnier than the very masculine voiced Dennis Leary playing a male ladybug? How about the lovely and hilarious late Madeline Kahn playing a beautiful gypsy moth? Or even David Hyde Pierce as a walking stick? All these famous actors mostly comedic playing as circus bugs just adds so much more character and life to the film itself.

In comparison to A Bug’s Life’s competition; Antz, I would have to say I liked Antz better only because of the story. While I am extremely fond of the animation and characters of A Bug’s Life, the story did not catch me as much as Antz did. I am a little sorry to say that only because it is believed that one of the people at DreamWorks animation had worked with Lasseter at PIXAR, got fired, and hired at DreamWorks and stole the idea of a computer animated film about bugs. Nonetheless, A Bug’s Life is my least favorite of the PIXAR line-up; however it is still an unbelievably amazing film and will remain in my list as one of the best animated films so far. Anyway you should go check out A Bug’s Life for yourself and see if you are as fond of computer animated creepy crawlies as I am.

Run time: 96 mins.

Directed by: John Lasseter and Andrew Stanton (Co-director)

Written by: John Lasseter and Andrew Stanton

Starring: Dave Foley, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Dennis Leary, David Hyde Pierce, Joe Ranft, Bonnie Hunt, Kevin Spacey, Madeline Kahn, Richard Kind, and Jonathan Harris