"Don't you want your Aphid Beer?" "Call me crazy, but I have a thing about drinking from the anus of another creature, okay?"

Rating: 7/10 (3 October 1999)

While watching Antz, it is always tempting to compare it with the similarly themed and CGI-ed "A Bug's Life" from Disney.
In fact, doing so only detracts from both as, despite many thematic similarities, they are very different films. The Disney film is, as you would expect, the more saccharine and self-consciously humorous of the two. It scores over Antz by brimming with inventiveness, particularly the scenes where Flik is in the underworld. These scenes often reference latter day cartoons, including "Hoppity Goes To Town", and feature memorable scenes such as the Bloody Mary-drinking mosquito and the slug that forgot not to order salt with his burger. However, while a slight homage is made to the works of the 30s and 40s, the CGI on both these films is of the period and absolutely magnificent. Where this fails is in the fact that it is no longer groundbreaking, as it was when attempted with "Toy Story". To this end, Toy Story is spoofed during the truly inspired "outtakes" sequence at the climax.
Antz, however, is the story I awarded the highest marks (7 to A Bug's Life 6). A Bug's Life is a children's film which adults can enjoy, Antz is an adult film which children may not enjoy or even comprehend. It would be overstating it to say Antz has depth, but certainly a cartoon feature with themes and images of genocide, decapitated corpses and graphic physical violence is not the sort of thing you'd want to show your newly-borns. While the basic plot is the same - ant leaves colony in disgrace only to return in triumph - the basic motivation is different. In the Disney vehicle, Flik leaves with the urge to return. In Antz, Z (Woody Allen) WANTS to leave. In all this is mixed up an Orwellian parable and the nature of individualism and choice. Not exactly Tom and Jerry.
Woody Allen, while a fine comedian in his own films, is far better when out of context. He ALWAYS plays the neurotic Jewish New Yorker, but when that Jewish New Yorker is the chief villain in a James Bond movie (The only reason to watch Casino Royale) or an ant on a psychiatrist's couch bemoaning "never being able to lift more than ten times my own bodyweight", then it borders on genius. Antz also scores over its rival by having a smaller set of characters, with only (more or less) ants to make up the cast. No show-stealing fleas, ladybirds or caterpillars for this movie.
But where A Bug's Life had Kevin Spacey as a villainous grasshopper, the only real protagonist in Antz is the stifling lifestyle of conformity. It's the better film, but is it any wonder less people went to see it?