Antz

Voices of: Woody Allen, Dan Aykroyd, Anne Bancroft, Danny Glover, Gene Hackman, Jennifer Lopez, Sylvester Stallone, Sharon Stone, Christopher Walken, John Mahoney, Jane Curtin
Directed by: Eric Darnell, Tim Johnson
Rating: PG
Genre: Animation, Adventure, Comedy
1998

Times Seen:
Tim: 1

Summary: A neurotic worker ant (Woody Allen) tries to defy his colony's expectations of him when he falls in love with the Princess (Sharon Stone) and gets caught up in trying to stop a plot to overthrow the Queen (Anne Bancroft)

Review:

Tim: In one of those odd Hollywood twists, 1998 gave us two computer animated films about ants, one from Pixar (A Bug's Life) and one from DreamWorks (Antz). While I didn't love A Bug's Life, I definitely have to give it the win over this film. Antz is an average, lukewarm animated film. It had a few strengths, but just far too many flaws.

My biggest complaint is putting Woody Allen in the lead vocal role. Who thought the idea of neurotic ant as a lead character was a good idea? Sure, fans of Allen's shtick might have ate this up, but I've never loved Allen when he casts himself as the lead in his own films. I likewise didn't love him here. His mumbling gets old rather quickly, even when it's coming out of the mouth of an anthropomorphic ant. Since I didn't like our main character and he annoyed me, it was hard to get invested in anything on screen.

I felt like one of the bigger problems in this film is that while it has a great cast, the actors' voices are so recognizable that they distracted from the film. Without realistic, multidimensional characters (whether animals or insects or robots), the familiar voices can overtake the characters. This happens from time to time in DreamWorks films. For example, I love the idea of using Sylvester Stallone to voice a huge, strong, tough warrior ant. However, his character is so one-dimensional that I couldn't name any specific characteristic of his. So, whenever I heard Stallone speak, I heard the actor, not the character. That's a huge problem. The same thing happened with Christopher Walken and Gene Hackman. I thought Jennifer Lopez did a slightly better job, as did Danny Glover, Dan Aykroyd, and Anne Bancroft. I don't deny this film has a hugely impressive cast, but the script offered them weak characters to play. That's a shame, and a bit complaint I have with this film.

I felt like the story was just average. It was a bit more grown up than I would have expected- the basic plot is that the General of the army plans a coup with his top lieutenants and soldiers, to kill the Queen, marry the Princess, murder all of the worker ants, and start a new colony. This is a bit much for kids, I would assume. It just felt a bit too inappropriate for a PG film. None of these themes are pursued deeply enough to connect with adults, and likely flew way over the heads of kids. The whole script just felt like a miss.

Antz isn't a great movie, it's not even particularly good. It's not terrible, though. As the first DreamWorks Animation film, this film did a few things right- enough to suggest that with time, DreamWorks will be able to compete (and possibly surpass) Pixar.

Rating 1-10
Tim's Rating: 6



If You Enjoyed This Movie, We Recommend: A Bug's Life, The Prince of Egypt