It takes place in a blue-collar bar, where ants dance in happy conformity to the strains of "Guantanamera," while that anarchist Z and his partner (Princess Bala in disguise) improvise. The score, made up of old standards, does, however, enhance one of the movie's wittier episodes. Sorry, "Antz" has no show-stopping song and dance numbers, no catchy melodies and no love songs either. It's surely not aimed at children, given its grotesque battle scenes, which might have been modeled on those between the Nazi youth and outer space bugs in "Starship Troopers." And an ant blathering on his wee analyst's couch seems equally unlikely to appeal to youngsters who tend to crack up at the gas-passing slapstick of the comic duo in "The Lion King." Hakuna matata. But then he hasn't got much to work with in this self-serving, product-plugging wisp of a script. Without those owlish eyes so bewildered behind those horn rims, that scrawny body and the rest of the preposterous package, Allen is just another whiner. Allen, as an ant in analysis, is frankly more annoying than amusing. But not Z (voiced by Woody Allen), the neurotic, nattering, narcissistic exception. It is the Ant Way, and most accept the system, which has served the species so well lo these thousands of years. In "Antz," the Queen (regally voiced by Anne Bancroft), Princess Bala (voiced by Sharon Stone) and their courtiers lounge about in the upper realms, while the drones, workers and soldiers labor in the tunnels deep below. The scene, like some aspects of the story, recalls "Metropolis," a social allegory about a tyrannical ruling class and the workers who toil in the totalitarian underground. These critters look more like those big-eyed, Gumby-like gray aliens On the other hand, the anthill itself is a spectacularly animated series of caverns, a subterranean realm humming with industry. Although the movies share similar story lines – idiosyncratic ant saves the hill from enemy hordes – Disney's bugs look funnier, funkier and more traditionally cartoonish than the more authentically drawn arthropods of "Antz." The animation might not have been such a problem, however, if these creepy crawlies had more appealing character traits. The first of two computer ant-imated features for fall, this little flick from DreamWorks is beating Disney's "A Bug's Life" to the screen by several weeks. While "Babe" made you want to give up bacon, "Antz" will make you reach for the Raid.
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