# Antz (1998)

### reviewed by
Ryan Davis

    Review: Antz (1998)
    Review By: Ryan Davis

Films that are animated sometimes get a bum rap. Mainly because people assume that just because they're cartoons, these films are just kids stuff. Dreamwork Entertainment's new computer animated film "Antz" definitely isn't just kids stuff, or at least it tries it's hardest not to be.

Antz's plot is simple enough; a worker ant, nicknamed Z(whose full name is Z-4195), is tired of his life of forced labor and longs for freedom. Troubled by ideas of a heaven-like place called "insect-topia" and his totally by chance dance with Princess Bala(princess of the colony) in a bar; Z becomes even more unhappy with his station in life. In an endeavor to meet with Princess Bala again, Z persuades his soldier friend, Weaver, into temporarily switching jobs with him. Soon after while Z is attending a military assembly, his squad is unexpectedly sent to war and Z has no choice, but to fight with them.

Z doesn't do much fighting, so he manages to be the only ant too survive the battle, and goes home a war hero. While being introduced to the Queen Ant, Z accidentally kidnaps the princess and inadvertently escapes the ant colony with her. Now both Z & Bala are trapped outside the colony, and they begin their journey for the mythical "insect-topia".

Unfortunately for Z, the kidnapping of the princess has ruined the evil scheme of the Hitler-like ant, General Mandible and his cunning comrade, Colonel Cutter. The General is not going to see his plan ruined and is going to do all he can to find Z, and get back the princess.

The strongest point of the film are the vocal performances. Woody Allen is just great as Z, he really does an impressive job. Tons of other big names turn in good performances in their respective roles: Sharon Stone(Bala), Sylvester Stallone(Weaver), and Gene Hackman(General Mandible). Another strong point are the one liners that add much needed fun to Antz.

When you get right down to it, Antz is an Animal Farm clone. Z is fighting a battle for individualism in a totalitarian society. While all this may be well and good, Antz is making a point that no one objects to. There was no need to make a nineties version of Animal Farm and the filmmakers got so busy attempting to add symbolism, they forgot about how weak the actual story was. So what you end up with is an interesting attempt at satire, some clever dialog, good voices, neat animation, and an unfortunately sparse story to bring it all together.

    Grade: B-

-----------== Posted via Deja News, The Discussion Network ==---------- http://www.dejanews.com/ Search, Read, Discuss, or Start Your Own

The review above was posted to the rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due to ASCII to HTML conversion.

Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews