A Bug's Life (1998)

Simply A Masterpiece

Admirable film.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

Cute family fun about an inventor ant named Flik, yet the more he tries to help, the more he seems to mess up. Until het gets a chance to save the colony from grasshoppers - with the help of circus bugs! Great story and feel-good fun entertainment, but definitely aimed at a young demographic. Typical pre-school material.

Such a great film. One of my favorites from Pixar.

It's Seven Samurai... except with ants. Kinda sorta.Okay, allow me to explain. A Bug's Life, the second ever Pixar film, tells about a distant and isolated ant colony who have been harassed by a swarm of grasshoppers for time immemorial. Every summer they arrive, every summer they eat their food, every summer they promise to come back. Until one day, through an unfortunate accident, there is no food for the grasshoppers to eat, and they threaten to flatten to colony unless they can gather enough food for them. Unfortunately, there's not enough time left to do so. So an unlucky ant, named Flik, volunteers to go look for help. He finds warrior bugs. Or at least he thinks he does.That's a kid-friendly version of Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai. Or a kid-friendly version of The Magnificent Seven, if you're more familiar with the westernized version.Of course it's not quite as cut and dry as that, but you can definitely see the inspiration behind the whole thing. And it works. It's a classic story for a reason and this is a mighty fine retelling of that. The characters are likable, the action is enjoyable, the film looks colourful and there are good morals to be learned.Then again, the computer effects have not aged particularly well. The grasshoppers still look menacing and scary, but the ants look plasticky, the backgrounds belong in a low-budget video game and overall it has this feel of where the bar was lowest to it. It also suffers from the problem of having a character or two too many. Seven Samurai could get away with it. That movie is over three hours long. A Bug's Life is barely over an hour and a half.Still, I have fond memories of this film and it was still an enjoyable hour and a half even as an adult. Pixar has nothing to be ashamed of, especially given that this was only their second outing.

It was a surprise when "Antz" and "A Bug's Life" (both computer-animated movies about formicids) got released a month apart in 1998. Most people called "A Bug's Life" the better movie, probably because they found it weird that the former had Woody Allen voicing the main character. Nonetheless, I saw "Antz" and not the latter; a trailer that I saw (preceding "Beloved" of all movies!) made it look childish, particularly with the line "Turn off your butt!"Well, I've now seen "A Bug's Life". I have to say that "Antz" is the better movie: cleverer and not so silly. "A Bug's Life" has the occasional funny reference to the real world, but it's no match for "Antz".As for the cast. I don't know who Dave Foley is. It's a bit jarring to hear Kevin Spacey's voice, now that he's fallen from grace. The rest of the cast includes Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Phyllis Diller, Denis Leary, Madeline Kahn, Roddy McDowall and Edie McClurg. Put another way, it stars Elaine, a comedienne, the ref, Lili von Schtupp, Cornelius and Ferris Bueller's principal's secretary (McClurg also appeared as the clerk who receives a profanity-laden rant from Steve Martin's character in "Planes, Trains and Automobiles").