Sarah_Louise is back!! This time I'm back to stay! I've been absent from Ciao for over a year now ...
Sarah_Louise is back!! This time I'm back to stay! I've been absent from Ciao for over a year now (time flies!) but I blame the birth of my first baby last July having a lot to do with it! :o)
Member since:26.07.2001
Reviews:188
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As per usual, last Christmas (it seems like such a long time....!) threw up a few good movies worth watching on the TV. It was Christmas 2001 when I saw Antz on TV, last Christmas, whilst flicking through the TV guide I noticed A Bugs Life advertised. I couldn’t remember whether this was what I’d seen the year earlier or not. I read the description, it sounded familiar. So much so I wasn’t going to bother watching it as I assumed it was what I’d seen the year earlier. By some stoke of luck though there wasn’t anything else worth watching at the time of this movie. (It was probably yet another repeat of Only Fools and Horses on the other channel....)
So, there I was, sat on the sofa expecting to have already seen it. (But then that doesn’t really matter, after all, we’ve all seen most of the episodes of Only Fools and Horses at least 35 times so what does just seeing one movie one more time matter?)
I have to say I was pleasantly surprised that I couldn’t recall the beginning of the movie. I was still convinced I’d seen it though, I just presumed I must have missed the beginning the year before! As time went on I soon began to realise that I really wasn’t remembering much about the film at all.
It turned out it was a completely different movie altogether!
Anyway, shall I stop rambling now?
So, as you may have gathered, this movie IS similar to Antz. However, even if you’ve seen Antz, its still worth watching (well, if you liked Antz, Toy Story and other animated movies that is).
You see there are subtle differences between Antz and A Bugs Life. Yes, they are both centred around invertebrates but the story line differs somewhat.
You see in Antz the story line is mainly based around ants (who’d have thought?) while A Bugs Life is mainly based around ants. Yes, I do realise ants are the main characters in both films but what can I say? I guess ants just make good characters! In A Bugs Life though you do get to meet other folks from the invertebrate and vertebrate family, e.g. a ladybird (who incidentally is a male ladybird!), a stick insect, a beetle, some grasshoppers, a caterpillar and a bird (along with some others whom I can’t quite remember too much about!)
A Bugs Life focuses on the war between grasshoppers and ants. You see grasshoppers are mean. They’re big, bad bullies. Each year they force the ants to collect food for them before the Winter. If the ants fail to collect enough food to feed the flock of grasshoppers they get extremely angry and the ants, being way down the food chain, fail to come out on top. (Which, in layman’s terms, results in the ants being killed!) As you can imagine, having to meet the needs of a mean and bossy grasshopper year in, year out, you soon tend to get a tad fed up. I won’t give away the story line, lets just say, something goes wrong this one year (due to a clumsy ant, oh, how I know how he feels!) The grasshoppers come along to find no food. They get stroppy and give the ants just a short space of time to collect all the food again. Then the story line starts to involve other invertebrates. You see the aforementioned clumsy ant (who’s name slips my memory) decides he’s got to do something. After all, it was entirely his fault for the lack of food in the first place. He goes off in search of new allies. He’s looking for strong, big but more importantly, fighter insects. You see he thinks that if he finds some vicious allies they can fight off the grasshoppers when they return to pick up their food rations. He finds himself some new allies, a ladybird, a stick insect, a caterpillar and a beetle. Not the most likely of allies you must admit. And the rest is history as they say.
So, after being pleasantly surprised to find I hadn’t actually seen this movie before, what did I think?
Well, for an animated movie based around insects this film makes a surprisingly interesting story. No, honestly. You do indeed find yourself engrossed in the story line, even though it is a tad silly!
Just as with Antz the year before, the graphics are great. They’re not at all life like but then it makes it more colourful to assume ants are a rather nice shade of blue doesn’t it? The landscape scenes are amazing too.
This film is ideal for everyone really, no matter what age group you fall into I’m sure you’ll get into this film. Obviously its predominantly aimed at kids but it doesn’t have a NA rating (which incidentally is just one I made up to mean “No Adults”). I’ve got proof that this film really is suitable for adults. You see not only am I officially an adult now (how scary is that?) but my parents watched this film a bit too, they had no qualms with it. If they don’t like something they normally make it very clear to me so I can only assume they at least mildly enjoyed this film. (Although they’d never openly admit that you understand!)
There aren’t any written rules to say older teens and adults can’t watch animated movies. Or if there are they should be torn up into little shreds and placed in the nearest fire!
So, to conclude. If you like invertebrates or you simply like animated movies then you must give this film a watch. Yes it’s a kids movie really but who cares? If you’re that concerned about your image just take the phone off the hook, lock all the doors and close the curtains whilst you watch this. No one will ever know then!
I really don’t have anything bad to say about this movie really. The only minor qualm I have with it is the fact that both it and Antz were released in such close proximity to one another (both in 1998) and like I said at the beginning of this op, they are similar in their style.
However I’d also recommend Antz too so you’ll just have to watch both won’t you? :P
More info: http://www.pixar.com/featurefilms/abl/
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Production Year: 1999 - Family - Director: Rob Minkoff - Original Language: English - Classification: Universal - Starring: Hugh Laurie, Geena Davis, Michael J. Fox, Nathan Lane, Chazz Palminteri
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![A Bug's Life [DVD] [1999]](http://picnicb.ciao.com/uk/78539799.jpg "A Bug's Life [DVD] [1999]")
Feb 17th, 2003
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