# Bug's Life, A (1998)

### reviewed by
Chuck Dowling

    A Bug's Life (1998)
    *** out of *****

Cast: Dave Foley, Kevin Spacey, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Phyllis Diller, Richard Kind, David Hyde Pierce, Denis Leary, Madeline Kahn, Bonnie Hunt, John Ratzenberger, Roddy McDowall, Edie McClurg, Alex Rocco, David L. Lander Written by: John Lassiter, Andrew Stanton, Joe Ranft, Don McEnery and Bob Shaw Directed by: John Lassiter and Andrew Stanton Running Time: 95 minutes

A Bug's Life is the second of 1998's cartoon bug movies, this one from Disney and Pixar (who made 1995's Toy Story). It's 180 degrees different from the year's previous bug film, Dreamworks' Antz. Where Antz was more adult in it's tone and more realistic in it's appearance, A Bug's Life is strictly for the kids. It's Disney... what did you expect?

A Bug's Life is about a colony of ants who are terrorized by a group of grasshoppers, led by the oh-so-cleverly named Hopper (voice of Kevin Spacey). Flik (voice of Dave Foley) is an accident prone misfit in the ant colony who is sent off to find "tough bugs" to help the ants fight the evil grasshoppers. He stumbles across a group of bugs in an "insect bar" who he believes are the answer to his problems, but as it turns out they are just a group of circus performing bugs. Flik leads these bugs back to his colony where comic misadventures occur, as you'd expect. I never thought I'd see anyone remake Three Amigos... but Disney has done it.

The DVD release of A Bug's Life contains both the original widescreen 2.35:1 version of the film, and "a specially rendered full-screen version which bypassed the usual film-to-video transfer by going direct from the digital source to DVD master". Those of you who care about such technical details should understand what I just said (and those of you that don't won't care). Both sets of "bloopers" from the film's end credits are also on the disc.

The computer animation is simply fantastic in A Bug's Life. Yes granted the bugs have been "Disney-ed up" a great deal, as the ants are cute blue creatures with more human-like features than insect ones. The colors are bright and vibrant, and the picture is crystal clear. A visual delight, if you will.

Also included on the disc is the Pixar short film "Geri's Game," which won an Oscar. Other than that there are no extras whatsoever... certainly nothing to justify the DVD's $35 retail cost. The Signature Selection release of Antz on DVD absolutely destroys this disc in terms of extras. Fans of special editions on DVD (myself being one) deserve more.

Kids should enjoy this one much more than Antz, but parents could go for either one. To me, A Bug's Life was equally as entertaining as Antz... it's rarely laugh out loud funny but it's never boring either. It's nice to look at, and the cast and their voice acting is excellent. A pleasant way to spend an hour and a half. [G]

The Jacksonville Film Journal -- Film Reviews by Chuck Dowling URL:http://users.southeast.net/~chuckd21/ Email:chuckd21@leading.net

© 1999 of The Jacksonville Film Journal. No reviews may be reprinted without permission.

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