A brilliant animated film with a great plot

Rating: 8/10 (16 May 2011)

Dreamworks Animation, who we all know for their commercially successful films, started out with this hilarious film called Antz.
Antz leading character is a working ant called Z, voiced by Woody Allen. Allen does excellent work at making Z a very optimistic and self-conscious character, a lot like the many characters he was written and directed himself as over years. Like Allen, Z is very optimistic about how he feels about his life.
The film starts with Z talking to a psychologist about how feels that he is just worthless. The film then transitions to Z feeling like he is worthless, but with attitude. We then meet Azteca, voiced by Jennifer Lopez. She is friends with Z but nothing like him. She feels like he needs to relax.
At the same time, we are introduced to two other key characters: General Mandible, voiced by Gene Hackman, and Princess Bala, voiced by Sharon Stone. Hackman is just pure excellence in making Mandible to be the sadistic general who wants to see his worker ants wiped out. Bala is a lot like Z in the sense that she is not happy with her life either.
Later, Z and Bala by chance meet up at a bar and dance together. When Bala leaves, she thinks that they will never see him again. Z asks for a favor from his friend Weaver, voiced by Sylvester Stallone. Z wants to switch places with Weaver, who is a soldier ant. After Z helps win a war against termites, he finds out about Mandible's mission to wipe out the workers. Z makes it his mission to have his colony break out of its totalitarian ways led by Mandible's tyrant power and to win over Bala's heart.
Another great voice performance is Colonel Cutter, voiced by Christopher Walken. Walken is great at being the guy who has to tolerate Mandible for so long until being fed up.
The animation is great at showing what life can be like for an individual ant in his culture. The plot is just great at making the story a comedy and showing what one ant can do. There is some mild language, but the language makes the jokes work.