Visually Satisfying but lacks interest. **1/2 out of ****

Rating: 6/10 (12 October 1998)

I want to start my review of "Antz" by asking an easy question: What does Woody Allen, Sharon Stone, Gene Hackman, Sylvester Stallone, Christopher Walken, Dan Aykroyd, Anne Bancroft, Jane Curtin, Jennifer Lopez & Danny Glover have in common. No, not that they all live in Hollywood. Each and every one of them contributes their wonderful voice in this movie, which I may say, is the first animated movie from DreamWorks Studio, and benefits from the help of filmmaker Jeffrey Katzenberg, who earlier oversaw the renaissance in Disney animation, and Steven Spielberg.

I also wish to explain to you that even the biggest names in the movie business, which is what this movie contains, and the other pluses of the production do absolutely nothing for the film and minds well have been absent from it. Sure, my star rating was certainly boasted because of them, but in the end, the main and final flaw in this movie is the fact that the movie offers noting of interest to an audience. An ant's life is the story presented here and quite frankly, I couldn't care less about an ant's life, really.
The ant who is magnified in "Antz" is voiced appropriately by Woody Allen, as a nautical insect who is named Z. He lives in the ground in a deep, dark colony as everyone else does, and has an important job in his colony; to work and obey orders given to him. And after many years of doing so, Z is starting to wonder why he has to, and why no one else wonders this, or what purpose does his mining server.
There is another main ant in this movie, Bala, voiced beautifully by Sharon Stone, whose job is to be the future monarch and lay millions of eggs 24 hours a day. She is not too fond of that idea, especially because there is no fun involved with her life. She sneaks out of confinement one day and managers to present herself to the nerdy looking Z and dance with him during a daily festival. But when Bala is caught, Z asks when they will be able to meet once again and she states "Never."
Z soon catches on that Bala is the princes and so onÂ… that there's about an upcoming soldier march to be presented in front of the royal family. So he asks his massively muscular ant friend, Barbatus (Stallone) who is a soldier to trade places with him for that event. He says yes and lots of plot twist happen after the tuning point. I could bore (or excite) you with the pathetic story point for the next several paragraphs but I am not that mean, so I will stop there and let the imagination carry through.

I loved the images of the movie. It is fully computer animated and tries to measure up to the magnificent "Toy Story" and "Small Soldiers" but doesn't come close to the visual pleasure. You see, those movies: 1) Offered something more than watching an urban insect's adventures, 2) had lots of brilliant colors. "Antz" gives us two colors; light brown for the ants' bodies, dark brown for the colonies' walls. There are some instances that prove me wrong but for the most part, the only visual enjoyment in this film comes half way thought.
I can't recommend "Antz" for the reason of it didn't do much for me. I give the film a marginal thumbs down because I am one-hundred percent sure that a large majority of an audience will enjoy this picture to the extreme. A one line summary of the movie in my point of view: "Toy Story" meets "Starship Troopers" from an ant's point of view.