Bug's Life, A 1998, Rated G Buena Vista Home Entertainment

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Starring Dave Foley, Julia Louis-Dreyfus. Released to DVD on April 20, 1999.

The story of A Bug's Life is, itself, nothing more than a retelling of the Aesop's Fable, The Grasshopper and the Ants. Newsradio's Dave Nelson voices the character of Flik, the ant colony's resident inventor/klutz. Flik creates new energy-efficient methods of collecting seeds and cutting grass, but his inventions are deemed silly... mostly because he falls down a lot while using them. The ants have a long-standing arrangement with the grasshoppers that winter nearby: the ants will provide the grasshoppers with a suitable amount of food, in the form of nuts and seeds, and the grasshoppers will not kill the ants. When the grasshoppers return from their summer of debauchery elsewhere, they find that Flik has accidentally knocked all their food over the side of a cliff. Hopper, the lead grasshopper, voiced wonderfully by Kevin Spacey, demands twice the amount of food originally necessary, in a shorter amount of time. While the rest of the colony begins to comply with Hopper's demands, Flik travels to the city and hires a rag tag group of circus performers he believes to be mercenaries to fight Hopper and his grasshopper cronies.

What made A Bug's Life so particularly appealing to me, wasn't just the stuffed animalibility of the characters, or the message that working together can bring out the best in everyone, but the wonderfully vibrant color scheme of the film and the enormous amount of creative energy that went into putting this story on screen.

Bright greens, yellows, blues, and reds were prolific throughout the entirety of A Bug's Life's, both capturing and soothing the eye at the same time. This bright, almost impressionistic usage of color gave this production an added warmth and comfort that Antz simply did not have.

The characters in A Bug's Life were likeable-thanks to Spacey's charming, over-the-top rendering of Hopper, even the villains were likeable-and they were funny, damn it. The eclectic group of circus performers, featuring the voices of David Hyde Piece and Denis Leary among others, were the comedic high points of the film, with Leary's male ladybug provoking numerous laughs.

Antz had a certain edge to it's production-spouting thinly veiled communist rhetoric can have that effect on a movie-that, ironically, took away from the sense of connectedness and unity felt in the given ant colony. This was not the case in A Bug's Life as, although it may be like living in Pleasantville, each member of the colony knew one another and, generally speaking, carried on good relations with one another.

Directors John Lasseter and Andrew Stanton spent an enormous amount of time on this project, supervising the animation, creating and recreating sub-plots and the like, working to make sure A Bug's Life flowed smoothly and cohesively. And it shows in the final product. Particularly indicative of their work on this movie were the faux outtakes included during the end credits.

Lasseter originally had thought of putting computer generated outtakes at the end of Toy Story, but time constraints forced him to scrap the idea; he comforted himself with the $200 million plus Toy Story went on to earn. However, with a more comfortable 'shooting' schedule on A Bug's Life, the outtakes of characters flubbing lines, walking into things and playing practical jokes on one another were included. This extra mile that Lasseter and the Pixar team walked with the outtakes-working and creating new material even when they were finished with their original specified project-shows the dedication and enjoyment they received from working on this film. And it shows in the final product.

Warm, happy, joyful, funny, and entertaining A Bug's Life is just a superior all around movie. Of the two computer generated ants movies, see this one.