A Bugs Life

Staring: Um...Denis Leary, and...that guy from News Radio, and...oh what's the difference?  It's all voices, who really cares?

Review by The Ranting WolfCastle

    I like cartoons just as much as the next twenty year old college punk, but now a ton of movies are cartoons.  They don't even have to draw them anymore, a computer can do it, that's why they're pumping 'em out left and right.  Movies like Toy Story and A Bug's Life, are kind of good though, because they are different.  It actually takes them an excess of three years to put the whole thing together, it's nice that they are putting so much effort into it.

    A Bug's Life is the second movie by Pixar.  It's about an ant colony oppressed by the evil grasshoppers.  Every year the grasshoppers come and eat the food that the ants have harvested for them.  Then they leave.  But this year, one screw up ant accidentally ruins the food, so the grasshoppers are pissed.   The screw up ant leaves the colony to find combat bugs to fight off the grasshoppers, and end the oppression.  He finds some, but they turn out to be circus bugs.  So now they have to hatch a plan to end the terrible reign of the grasshopper.

    I don't know about you, but when I was a kid, I liked grasshoppers a hell of alot more than ants.  They jumped really high, and left me alone for the most part.   All the ants ever did was crawl on me.  I never dreamed that my friends, the grasshoppers, were such awful insects.  I doubt that they truly are, but I shutter to even imagine the massacre that will ensue come next summer when all the little kids that saw the movie start killing grasshoppers to save the ants.  Oh well.

    For a kiddy movie this flick is pretty good.  You can take your little siblings or offspring to it, and not be in utter pain for a couple of hours while the little ones eat your popcorn, spill soda down your leg, and laugh at insanely annoying characters talking about diapers and babies and all that crap.  You can actually enjoy yourself.

    Toy Story was more creative, and more entertaining, but A Bug's Life is decent too.  I saw it for two bucks, some kind of special that was going on, I don't know if I would pay more than that, but I guess if you're trying to get your kid to shut up for a couple of hours, it would be worth more to you. 

    What I don't understand is the outtakes that follow the movie.   Obviously there wouldn't be any in a fabricated film like this, but yet, there they are.  My sister said that it was to give the movie a feeling of authenticity, so the kids would think it was real.  Isn't that a bit destructive?  I just though it was because the people doing the voices screwed up, and the animators had some time to kill.  But then when I saw some of the outtakes, that couldn't be, because some of them have no speaking at all.  It would just be a bug falling over or something like that.  I guess I'll never understand the mind of a guy that sits in a tin can for twelve hours a day and makes sure that the ants' eyes look just right.  I mean, you can't make them too big now can you?

    So, if your kids, or step kids, or whatever they're called in this land ridden with broken households want to see this movie, go see it with them.  You won't want to kill yourself halfway through, unless you are truly more disturbed than the average parental authority.  In that case you might not want to be in touch with your children too much longer, because you are a threat to their being.  In fact, what the hell were you thinking when you had kids in the first place?  You should be ashamed.  But if you are a normal person, it shouldn't be too much of a problem.

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