Too Smart for its Own Good...

Rating: 9/10 (3 November 2016)

Great films often have one thing in common; the first minutes make you certain that you're going to encounter awesomeness many times.
And surprisingly, in the case of "Antz", I had that impression before the very first minute ended (not counting the opening credits). I should mention that Woody Allen is one of my favorite directors and storytellers, because when the opening shot showed a shadowy silhouette of what looked like a pre-2001 New York City and when I heard the voice of Woody Allen in voice-over, deep inside, I knew it was going to be a very special experience. And I wasn't disappointed.
So the shadows unveil tall grass looking down on an anthill where we can hear Z' whining to (guess what) his psychiatrist. His mother abandoned him, he never knew his father and he feels somewhat insignificant. Yes, we've heard that before, but the masterstroke is to have adapted Woody Allen's usual shtick for the ants' world. The anthill is designed to look like a vast and complex metropolis where one can easily develop deep feeling of rejections if he has a mother whose daily occupation consists on laying eggs. When the number of children is to be counted on millions, this is not your usual middle-child syndrome and Z elevates the Allenian existential crisis to its most hilarious heights.
And I admire Dreamworks for picking the most unlikely protagonist for not for any animated film, but their first one, their "Toy Story". And for its first hit, DreamWorks recreated a very convincing Orwellian society, a world where ants are conditioned from the start, checked at their birth and selected to be either soldiers or workers. Z is a worker, he doesn't like his job much, there's more exciting work than digging holes and demolishing rocks, but as a natural-born pacifist, he doesn't want to be a soldier either. In fact, Z only wishes he could have a choice, to be able to take his own decisions. If children wouldn't necessarily care for Woody Allen, Z's personal issues are handled in a way that can even appeal to a younger audience. If anything, "Antz" is like a kids' introduction to Woody Allen.
But let's not make it too centered on our lovable neurotic loser. As central as Z is, we also get to know his friends, a gentle solidly-built soldier voiced by Sylvester Stallone, a co-worker voiced by Jennifer Lopez, and at the top of the hierarchy, you have Princess Bala, voiced by Sharon Stone, her mother, the Queen, voiced by Anne Bancroft. Bala sounds like the typical Princess with a craving for freedom and self-accomplishment but actually, she's just curious to discover the outside world. She has no projects to cancel her marriage with General Mandible, the ambiguous Army Chief voiced by Gene Hackman, and whose right-hand man has the voice of Christopher Walken. You get it, this is a star-studded cast.
But the voices are never distracting because the roles fit the actors' personalities and watching "Antz", you never feel like watching an 'animated film' but a film driven by fully written characters, not archetypes. And this contributes to very powerful sequences, there's one involving a fierce battle against termites, and this is almost as if "Saving Private Ryan" was made into animation, and I admire that. I love how DreamWorks went as far as making a soldier (Danny Glover) die in the arms of Z and not make a cliché out of it. I often blamed DreamWorks for relying too much on pop-culture tropes and celebrities but this is one of these times where it drove the plot in a nuanced and efficient way.
And the more I let "Antz" play in my mind, the more I reconsider my opinion about Pixar's "A Bug's Life", which made it in the box-office top 10 in 1998, unlike "Antz". But when I watched the Pixar's film, I knew I liked it but something was missing, too many characters I said in my review, I guess I meant 'not enough characterization', in "Antz", you have characters with opposite motives and opinions that sometimes overlap, but from these contrasts, believable and gripping conflicts result, not to mention very funny interactions. I can see why DreamWorks producers were so bugged about "A Bug's Life", this is a case where the lesser film won. Or maybe we should try to see what went wrong with "Antz".
Maybe it's the look of the "Antz", too brownish, too geometrical, compared to the cuter rotund faces of Disney, or the fact that you can't really sell a film to the kids if the main voice is Woody Allen, or maybe the parents thought one ant-themed film for the year was enough. Maybe there were improvements to be made in the visuals' department and looking at the following movie "Shrek", you can tell DreamWorks adopted a more Disney-like style without abandoning their tongue-in-cheek and adult friendly humor. And as a matter of fact, I wonder if the Pixar animators didn't try to pull some 'Antz" humor in their 2001 movie "Monsters & Inc." It's funny how the two rival studios can inspire one another.
So, if "A Bug's Life" is a good film, "Antz" is a great one, so great it made the last Top 10 from the late critic Gene Siskel. It's even greater because you could tell the writers spent a few time studying ants and adapted some scientific facts into the film, the way they form a giant ball, the decapitated hand still capable to talk, the soldiers vs. workers shift. They could also add some human political questionings and philosophical issues like individualism vs. collectivity, and even feature war and romance. The film's as multi-layered as its underground setting.
Or maybe that was the problem, it was just too smartly 'underground' for its own good.