Kurosawa would be proud?

Rating: Null/10 (22 February 2018)

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.