Diversity of Disney: Anxiety, Allen and Tale of Ants

It's all there, from the Manhattan skyline to Woody driveling anxiety to his shrink, the first moments of Antz suggest a film destined to become another prototypical Woody Allen movie. Or so it seems until Woody (now an ant named "Z") gets off the psychoanalyst's couch and walks into "The Colony." Hardly the accustomed venue for paranoid melodrama, the computer generated image of a million humanoid ants carrying around gargantuan dirt clods seems to belong more to a Charleton Heston flick than to a movie whose hero is characterized by unrelenting nervousness.

Incongruity aside, this first pan through the Ant Colony is sure to be the newest addition to the hall of mainstream animation fame. Like the Wildebeast stampede in The Lion King or the ballroom sequence in Beauty and the Beast it is difficult not to be enraptured by this visual tour of the capital of ant farms. As you'd expect, listening to Woody Allen complain about "never being able to lift more than ten times his body weight" is funny, but in Antz, it is the panorama that steals the show. The casting choices made by Dream Works are a good stab at originality in the increasingly stale world of animated blockbusters, but in the end, Antz turns out to be little more than the same old story.

Though Antz has both a plot and a passable script, the feeling that the movie exists primarily to demonstrate schnazzy new animation technology is inescapable. Only the second full length movie to be entirely computer animated, the makers of Antz seem particularly interested in demonstrating their ability to depict water and human movement, even if the plot must make some rather forced detours in order to accommodate these animated showpieces.

In an example of this, Z, dissatisfied with his workaday life, kidnaps the Colony's princess and escapes with her to the fabled "Insectopia." Though the movie is long enough to be boring, the ants' trip into the uncolonized wilderness is short shifted. Rather than saying some key lines about what it's like to be the arthropodic equivalent of Adam and Eve, Z and Princes Bala (voiced by Sharon Stone) get captured in a giant dewdrop and spend more time than is interesting interred in gum on the bottom of some kid's shoe (allowing unusual camera angles that will really excite the graphics techies.) These shots are "cool," but do make it seem like an Imax documentary on the "lives of an ant" has been artlessly spliced into a generic Disney "plebian saves princess" cartoon.

The plot couldn't be more typical. Z (Allen) is one of two individualistic ants in a colony which (like any good super-organism) demands subservience if it is to survive. Depressed by his insignificance, Z follows his heart and breaks the rules to court the Princess Bala (Stone). Gump-style, Allen becomes a war hero and accidentally escapes with the princess, inciting the colony to rebellion by his example of disobedience. As it turns out, the insubordinance is well timed, since the Colony's other individualistic ant (voiced by Gene Hackman), has plans to work the colony to death in order to create a master race in its stead. Though the character of Allen, as well as those of the other actors (voiced by Dan Akroyd, Anne Bancroft, Sylvester Stalone and Jennifer Lopez among others), takes some of the edge off the hackneyed plot, Antz fails to fully engage. If computer animation was begging for something with epic, imperialistic proportions, where the miracle of 3-D animation could be unleashed onto big battle and mob scenes, it got it. Plotwise however, Antz is virtually indistinguishable from the recent Mulan and earlier Aladdin. Having Woody Allen's trademark quips and Sylvester Stallone's kindhearted brawn in place of accustomedmediocre musical numbers makes Antzdifferent from its Disney predecessors, but notdifferent enough.

The spare time allowed by the long scenicmoments invites contemplation of Antz'smain point (which is, of course, the animation).Making an entire movie by computer isn't really agood in itself. Who wants to see the quaint art ofdrawing animation cells taken over byultra-sensitive mice?

There is a perk, though, and that is that thecomputer allows the whole picture to be done in3-D. Animation has long been unparalleled in itsability to flesh out the imagined world, and makeit move. The shift from two dimensions to threemakes the fantasy more believable than everbefore. Possibly the most delightful aspect ofAntz is puzzling over whether bugs reallydo these things, or if one is confusing gradeschool Bio with popular insect mythology.

Compared to a live-action bug movie likeMicrocosmos, Antz is surprisinglyunsurprising. In Microcosmos, (where someentomologists-turned-cinematographers made anaction/adventure documentary about bugs goingabout their daily business), everything differedfrom expectation.

Lady bugs did not look particularly friendly,nor grass particularly inviting, and maggots, inspite of their usual chillpower, turned out to bequite stunning in all their hulking, iridescentsplendor. In Antz on the other hand, thingsare very much as you'd expect them to be; aninsectine monarchy where Utopia is a defined by ared checked picnic blanket. The trick 3-D spacegives ant mythology the strongest flavor ofrealism, though nothing could be further from thetruth.

The animators who envisioned Antz hadlong wanted to use the insect world as a forum forcomputer animation technology, and it is onto thisgraphic interest that the storyline issuperimposed. It was a good pick. Thoughartificial imitation of lifelike movement isquickly improving, it still lags behind real life,and its best approximation is hand drawn 2-Danimation. Because insects are commonly depictedin the media through a time-lapse photographytechnique, jerky, almost mechanistic movement inthe ant-characters is exactly what one wouldexpect. By altering the subject from human toinsect, the flawed technology seems spot on.

Even if Antz tends to sag in the middle,and is debased by a "moral" so pastiched that itmust be explicitly stated, it is entertaining tosee what Woody Allen and Sylvester Stallone looklike with six legs and shiny exoskeletons.

All the same, this isn't a movie that you watchfor its psychological intrigue or scintillatingwit. For the full (and only) effect, catch it onthe big screen and enjoy the same old story--onlythis time in 3-D

The spare time allowed by the long scenicmoments invites contemplation of Antz'smain point (which is, of course, the animation).Making an entire movie by computer isn't really agood in itself. Who wants to see the quaint art ofdrawing animation cells taken over byultra-sensitive mice?

There is a perk, though, and that is that thecomputer allows the whole picture to be done in3-D. Animation has long been unparalleled in itsability to flesh out the imagined world, and makeit move. The shift from two dimensions to threemakes the fantasy more believable than everbefore. Possibly the most delightful aspect ofAntz is puzzling over whether bugs reallydo these things, or if one is confusing gradeschool Bio with popular insect mythology.

Compared to a live-action bug movie likeMicrocosmos, Antz is surprisinglyunsurprising. In Microcosmos, (where someentomologists-turned-cinematographers made anaction/adventure documentary about bugs goingabout their daily business), everything differedfrom expectation.

Lady bugs did not look particularly friendly,nor grass particularly inviting, and maggots, inspite of their usual chillpower, turned out to bequite stunning in all their hulking, iridescentsplendor. In Antz on the other hand, thingsare very much as you'd expect them to be; aninsectine monarchy where Utopia is a defined by ared checked picnic blanket. The trick 3-D spacegives ant mythology the strongest flavor ofrealism, though nothing could be further from thetruth.

The animators who envisioned Antz hadlong wanted to use the insect world as a forum forcomputer animation technology, and it is onto thisgraphic interest that the storyline issuperimposed. It was a good pick. Thoughartificial imitation of lifelike movement isquickly improving, it still lags behind real life,and its best approximation is hand drawn 2-Danimation. Because insects are commonly depictedin the media through a time-lapse photographytechnique, jerky, almost mechanistic movement inthe ant-characters is exactly what one wouldexpect. By altering the subject from human toinsect, the flawed technology seems spot on.

Even if Antz tends to sag in the middle,and is debased by a "moral" so pastiched that itmust be explicitly stated, it is entertaining tosee what Woody Allen and Sylvester Stallone looklike with six legs and shiny exoskeletons.

All the same, this isn't a movie that you watchfor its psychological intrigue or scintillatingwit. For the full (and only) effect, catch it onthe big screen and enjoy the same old story--onlythis time in 3-D