Disappointing follow-up to Toy Story

Rating: Null/10 (29 November 1998)

With all the hype surrounding A Bug's Life and the phenomenal success of Toy Story, I had pretty high expectations for A Bug's Life.
It is inevitable that A Bug's Life is going to be compared to Antz, the animated Woody Allen vehicle which came out a couple of months before. I was surprised to find that I enjoyed Antz more. Animation aside, the stories are amazingly similar: underdog ant triupmphs and saves the day! While the story line of Antz was engaging, A Bug's Life seemed just a little too predictable. Both stories are thinly veiled morality tales but A Bug's Life is practically transparent. The characters aren't as well developed and the plot is rather weak.
Unlike Toy Story which was driven by the excellent plot, and featured the most amazing computer animation ever to hit the big screen, A Bug's Life seemed to be driven by the animation. And as everybody knows whose seen a sci-fi flick that has an over-reliance on special effects, the effects just can't carry the movie. The same can be said of animation. While the animation in A Bug's Life is excellent-despite the over-use of pastel colors to depict the ants-the story lags behind. Not only that, it doesn't have the same cross-over appeal as Toy Story. That is, it seems to appeal more to children than adults, in contrast to Toy Story which appealed just as much to all ages.
I went to see the film with the same friend that I'd seen Antz with. Going into the film she was ready to buy stock in Pixar. She also guessed that she'd probably want to see the film more than once. When we walked out, she decided that once was enough after all, and that left over change was going to be invested somewhere else besides Pixar. Sorry Steve. Apple's looking like a better investment at this point!