You need to see A Bug's Life multiple times to fully appreciate it. This is not because the film is difficult to understand - this is a very mainstream movie, after all. Rather, the film is so skillfully and artfully conceived that a single viewing can't possibly do it justice. A Bug's Life achieves a very high level of animated artistry without compromising its vision for a jaded audience and without forsaking the traditions of animated films. To say A Bug's Life is an achievement is an understatement; it's quite possibly the funniest and at the same time most technically groundbreaking animated film in a decade or more.
The plot of A Bug's Life borrows from many classic folktales and fables, from "The Ant and the Grasshopper" to "The Brave Little Tailor" to the "Brehmen Town Musicians." There are also strong echoes of *To Be or Not To Be - but you won't notice any of this on a first viewing. While it's easy to figure out A Bug's Life's influences, it's important to note that A Bug's Life is not just a patchwork of inspirations. Rather, it is in the tradition of stories about unlikely heroes who stand up to bullies and prove themselves to their community. This may seem Capra-esque but it works amazingly well as storytelling. Like Capra, the populist message of A Bug's Life is told entertainingly and humorously and neatly balances the two American ideals of loyalty to one's community and the importance of individuality. The dialogue also harkens back to Capra's mainstream movies, making the film appropriate for all ages but without the dumbed-down stigma of a "family movie."
Technically, the film is a marvel. Computer-generated graphics have grown ever more realistic and there are times when it is difficult to believe that some of the backgrounds are not live-action. None of the graphics in the film draw attention to their origin as computer-generated imagery, a far cry from early computer animated shorts which reveled in translucent silver dinosaurs and other over-the-top images. A Bug's Life presents images which, on first glance, could pass for old Puppetoons. It is only when the figures move and change their facial expressions (and all the characters are extremely expressive) that we realise we are watching a very advanced technology. It favorably compares with Will Vinton's Claymation technique, and is even smoother than the animation used in Pixar's previous feature A Toy Story.
The voice cast mixes television celebrities such as John Ratzenberger, Dave Foley and Julia Louis-Dreyfus with lesser known talents like Phyllis Diller and Kevin Spacey to very strong effect. The celebrity voices, unlike those in many lesser animated films, are not intended to compensate for lack of animation skill. Rather, each actor contributes terrific performances in character and not simply extensions of their familiar personalities. If only more animated films and TV shows attempted such a cast!
A Bug's Life is distributed by Disney but filmed by the smaller company of Pixar, who are one of the better known computer-animation specialists around. Pixar has thusfar been able to take advantage of the Disney merchandising machine without compromising its storylines or visuals to conform to the Disney formula. The result is two of the most fascinating animated films in an era that abounds in interesting animated filmmaking. A Bug's Life, like the earlier Toy Story takes us to worlds we can only imagine.
And that is the film's greatest asset. Too often, when we see a modern animated film, we either witness a spectacle of rotoscoping or we suffer through a vehicle in which the only characterization comes from the celebrities hired as voice talent. A Bug's Life takes us back to the Felix the Cat and Max Fleischer cartoons, into a world which holds together with its own logic but which has little in common with ours. It's the furthest type of movie from retro, given that the technology is cutting-edge, but A Bug's Life evokes the feelings one had when first seeing the bouncy surrealism of the Fleischers years ago. I never thought I'd experience that again, and I'm happy that Pixar has given us a film that dazzles us the way that animated films should but frequently don't.
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