Manha(n)ttan

Rating: 9/10 (23 November 2011)

Toy Story opened up a whole new market for animation. It was a quantum leap forward and showed us the infinite possibilities of computer animation. After it put Pixar on the map, other studios were quick to jump on the bandwagon, with DreamWorks emerging as the first to go where only Pixar had gone before.
Pixar and DreamWorks are arguably the premier studios in this field. All the others vie for the same type of acceptance but have never wrested the crown from them. But when it comes to computer animation, Pixar have the edge over DreamWorks by a very wide margin. They manage an effortless blend of involving stories, characters we care deeply for, beautiful animation, and a rich vein of humour for adults as well.
On the other hand, I'm not quite as excited when DreamWorks animated features hits cinemas. A lot of them wind up infected with a modern cynicism, as well as an annoying habit of filling them out with film references and product placement. But they're animated debut Antz is definitely one of they're best, and one I have no problem watching time and time again.
Its interesting that Antz was released the very same year as Pixar's A Bug's Life. There are uncanny similarities. They're both about a misfit worker ant at odds with the society they live in. A relationship between the hero of the film and an ant princess. And even a similar climax where the colony must learn to combine as a whole to save it from destruction.
Of the two films, Antz is better. It does much more with the conceit of an idealist out of step with the rest of his colony. Also, where the hero of A Bug's Life was rather too anonymous, Antz has a fabulous protagonist, Z.
Z has always felt like an outsider. He was the middle-child in a family of five million. He derives no satisfaction from his job. And he has a problem with following the unblinking, unquestioning work ethic of the ant colony. This is all revealed to us in the opening scene where Z is in therapy, running off a list of inadequacies to a counsellor.
The voice of Z comes from none other than Woody Allen. How DreamWorks ever managed to land him I'll never know, but it was a stroke of genius. This opening monologue is classic Allen and could easily set the stage for Manhattan or Annie Hall.
Z comes in the unmistakable "world is against me" neurotic vibe Allen's perfected over the past four decades. I've never liked Woody Allen the actor as much as I like Woody Allen the director, but he's perfectly at home here. He's not really stretching himself, nor is it any different from what he usually does in any of his own films, but he's the perfect choice for Z.
In fact Antz has a very interesting lineup - Sharon Stone, Gene Hackman, Christopher Walken, Anne Bancroft, even Sylvester Stallone. Its even more interesting to discover how good they all are at voicework. You wonder why they've never attempted it before now.
Antz is a film that could never be made in the traditional hand drawn animation style. Not without compromising it. Toy Story could be done like that, because there was nothing in it that couldn't be accomplished the old fashioned way. But the computer animated medium allows Antz greater freedom. We see sweeping vistas of hundreds upon hundreds of ants, all performing individual tasks as far as the eye can see. You can imagine a hand drawn animator going blind trying to achieve the same thing.
One thing I especially liked about the film is the way it credibly depicts an ant colony. The animators have made an effort not to make them seem too warm and cuddly. They come in all the right colours, and the world they live in is a gritty and dirty one. Whereas A Bug's Life went the other way and bent over backwards to make them much more accessible to the kids in the audience.
Antz is not afraid to do things that might be considered shocking to an audience. The most striking setpiece in the film is when the ants go to war against they're mortal enemies, the termites. And its a nightmarish sequence. It comes out like a collision between the Battle of Normandy in Saving Private Ryan and the souped-up bug hunt of Starship Troopers. This type of carnage is something that never assailed the safer horizons of A Bug's Life.
Not only that, and unlike most kiddie films today, Antz will kill its characters, even the likable ones, with no chance of a return from the dead cliché. When the ants are nearly wiped out en masse at the climax, there is never any question in your mind that they're lives are in danger. You really wind up feeling for they're plight. There's also a level of casual swearing that quite surprised one. The film's PG certificate is well deserved.
One of the unpalatable things about animated fare nowadays, and DreamWorks is a particularly guilty offender is the way they play to a modern audience. Because Antz is they're first animated film, its not as overtook by product plugging and film referencing like DreamWorks' subsequent films. All you have to do is hold it up to Shark Tale and Shrek 2 to see what I mean. The scenes at Insectopia have a few intrusive brand names but never enough that they have the run of the film.
It all gets itself together for a thrilling climax, even if General Mandible doesn't get the end a villain of his stature deserves. But Antz is a real charmer with a smashing soundtrack. Antz fired the starters pistol between DreamWorks and Pixar, and while Pixar are normally a sure bet, this is the one time where DreamWorks outstripped Pixar in every possible way.