A Bug's Life had the misfortune of having to follow two tough acts. As the second effort from John Lasseter's Pixar outfit, it had to live in the shadow of the highly successful Toy Story, and as the second CGI insect fable to hit the screens in 1998, it inevitably offered up characters and scenes very like those you saw in Antz. However Antz lacks the heart and wittiness that A Bug's Life extrudes. It's enjoyable the use of animation to visualize a world that could not be seen in live action and could not be created with special effects. Animation contains enormous promise for a new kind of storytelling, freed from reality and gravity. It's a formula that has produced wonderful movies. But the Pixar computer animation studio, a Disney co-producer, broke new ground with "Toy Story" in 1995, and now with "A Bug's Life," it runs free. In A Bug's Life, when Flik inadvertently loses the food tribute set out by the ants for the predatory grasshoppers, he must find a way to protect his community. He goes off in search of warrior bugs to fight the grasshoppers. He mistakenly hires a group of unsuccessful vaudevillians from a flea circus, who think they are being booked for a performance and have no idea he expects them to fight. But they turn out to have just the right stuff to help the ants fight the grasshoppers after all, and Flick gets to prove that he is a hero at heart.
This was the second PIXAR film in their lineup of never-ending masterpieces, so it had to live up to its big brother’s standards. While it was a really fascinating film, it did not scratch the Toy Story ground work already laid for it. In truth, A Bug’s Life was still an incredible film. The animation bar for PIXAR was beginning to be set, since it was the second of their feature 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 of the textures. Almost everything looked how it should in real life in regards to its texture, such as 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, with it being set outside on a hill instead of inside of a bedroom, the animators were forced to figure out how the natural light sources would work within the film.
One of the most interesting things about this film was the uncanny dynamic and interactions between characters. The fact that they had a plethora of entomologic creatures, and how they all moved and acted as if these bugs were actually real humanoid characters added a new and attracting element to the film. 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. Lending their voices to the movie are Seinfeld's Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Phyllis Diller, Kevin Spacey, Spin City's Richard Kind, Frasier's David Hyde Pierce, and John Ratzenberger of Cheers. All of these famous, mostly comedic actors who played circus bugs added so much more character and life to the film itself.
A Bug's Life lacks the full crossover appeal of Toy Story, but it features some phenomenal moments. The sequence where the fragile ant colony is attacked by a bird is nothing less than sensational, while a simple rainstorm is transformed into a raging, destructive blitz of insect-crushing water bombs. Computer animation may now be less of a novelty, but Pixar's extraordinary fantasy still has the capacity to impress, blending visual and verbal slapstick with spectacular action and virtual stuntage.
You need to see this delightful movie more than once to appreciate the scope of its visual wit and technological mastery. Oddly enough, this wasn't the only computer-animated movie about bugs to come out in the fall of 1998; Antz was released just a month before, and the difference between the two animated bug movies is exemplified by their lead characters. Antz has Z, voiced by Woody Allen, angst-ridden, in analysis, searching for individual identity in a world of conformity. A Bug's Life has NewsRadio's Dave Foley providing his voice as Flik, an All-American ant-next-door type who is inventive, brave, and loyal. Antz was largely brown, but this movie uses a paintbox of color to produce stunning images with luminous tones. The Pixar animators, using later generations of the software that created such a fresh look in "Toy Story," have made a movie that is always a pleasure to look at: There are glistening, rounded surfaces, the sense of three dimensions, an eye for detail. It's small details like this tht make A Bug's Life a worthy successor
Easter Eggs
#1 A-113
The A-113 reference in A Bug’s Life shows up behind Flik on a cardboard box. When John Lassater, the creator of the movie was in the first year of the Character Animation Program at California Institute of the Arts, the classroom was numbered A113. He also added 11/95 because that was when Toy Story opened in theaters.
#2 Casey Jr
The circus train is made from boxes of Casey Jr. Cookies, which are made at the J. Grant Bakery. Casey Jr. was the name of the circus train from the Disney animated film Dumbo, and veteran Disney storyman Joe Grant wrote that film. Joe passed away in 2005.
#3 Bug City
When Flik leaves Ant Island to find the warrior bugs, he goes to the large "city," made of boxes, bottles, and other junk. When he gets to the city and looks around, a wall of one of the buildings is made from the poster to the Broadway version of "The Lion King". Right next to it is a sign from Darla’s- Darla is the girl in the dentists office from Finding Nemo.
#4 Director Cameos
The voices of the two bugs blinded by the light of the bug zapper, right before the "city" scene, are actually the voices of the two directors John Lasseter and Andrew Stanton.
#5 Pizza Planet Truck
The Pizza Planet truck made its first appearance in the original Toy Story, the delivery truck for the Pizza Planet. It has made cameos in every Pixar film to date, it shows up in A Bug's Life parked next to a trailer.
Comments