Let's get one thing straight. Despite its marketing, this is neither a film about ants nor Woody Allen.
Granted, Allen's voice and much of his celebrated onscreen "persona" is used to bring the film's protagonist, Z, to life. Z is shrimpy, neurotic and twitchy, a worker ant who whines about being insignificant to Paul Mazursky's psychiatrist on a tiny ant psychiatrist's couch. Even the opening sequence, which features a mock Manhattan skyline dissolving into cleverly-shaped pieces of grass, reminds us of Allen's filmic professions of love for New York, and specifically of his glamourous skyscape scenes from MANHATTAN (1979).
But Z is only a Hollywood simulation of Woody Allen. He's Woody Allen Lite, the wise-cracking schlemiel who, despite his various neuroses and puniness, gets everyone to realise they're individuals, saves the colony from flooding, then gets the shiksa and settles down. No fan worth his salt would consider this a Woody Allen film, simply because Allen films have always traditionally eschewed such ridiculous plot norms, and even in his early work like BANANAS and LOVE AND DEATH the Allen persona was a true anti-hero, with no community spirit whatsoever.
In ANTZ, the Allen-inspired Z is a depressed worker ants who meets and falls in love with Princess Bala (voiced by Sharon Stone). In contriving to meet her again, he accidentally kidnaps her and causes them both to fall out of the colony into the real world. As they head further away from the colony and discover Insectopia, however, General Mandible (voiced by Gene Hackman) executes plans to "purify" the colony and forge a new world. Needless to say, Bala and Z return to their home to save everyone.
More disturbing than Allen's cleaned up screen image, however, are the film's peculiarly conceptualised inhabitants. Although the film's animators have followed Disney's habit of creating their characters in the images of the people who voiced them, Z looks less like Woody Allen (who is balding, wiry and be-spectacled, God bless him) than a cross between E.T. and Mr Snuffalafagus. In other words, he's too cute for words! Nobody would ever say that about Woody. It doesn't help that the rest of the colony resemble an army of stiff-legged androids
("ant-droids"?), many looking a lot like the Maria creation from
METROPOLIS, with their sharp, shiny cheekbones, metallic shading and jerky movements, than any sort of life-form, much less ants.
Perhaps above everything is the fact that the worker-in-a-colony metaphor doesn't quite sqaure with the people-in-a-civilisation situation. It works for bits where Z tells us there must be more to life, or when he jokes about being a "soil relocation engineer," but the simple fact is that ants run a different ship from humans. They live in social colonies, with fixed social roles. The Hollywood cliche of individualism versus the mindless collective is so blunt and so boorish in ANTZ that Gene Hackman's General Mandible, the villain of course, snarls at his troops at one point that individualism is dangerous and must be squashed.
And what would happen if every ant really started thinking for himself or herself (not in the contained way presented in ANTZ, but really and truly), left the colony and headed out in large droves to Insectopia to do whatever they wanted?
More importantly, however, true to Hollywood tradition, ANTZ features a plot that neither follows through with this -- are the animators not up to the graphical challenge of a swarming horde of worker ants descending on Insectopia, or have they just never bothered to think through the effects of a full-scale ant rebellion? -- but settles the ants right back where they were in the first place with the most ridiculous of logic.
But if you can put these minor arguments aside, and it can't be very difficult to do so, ANTZ is still truly delightful. The punchline-only New Yawka allusions, urban juxtapositions (such as the Z's distaste for worker girls who are "only interested in digging") and stock character types that inhabit the colony will perhaps appeal more to an adult audience than children, but the small-world perspective will thrill everyone. Especially exciting are Z and Princess Bala's dangerous adventures, seen from their miniscule viewpoints, of their the world outside the ant hill.
Unlike the typical Disney action adventure feature, ANTZ is really more a few parts screwball comedy and a few parts Western. Romantically less cloying than Disney's annual cultural cannibalisation, Bala and Z bicker cutely and as equals, reminding us of early Woody-Diane couplings on screen (1973's SLEEPER, LOVE AND DEATH, and even the much later MANHATTAN MURDER MYSTERY). Their journey towards Insectopia, a land with endless food supply and freedom, resembles the travel to the frontier that characterises the formal Western. Difficulties such as giant, earthshaking footsteps that have the ants clinging for their lives recall a little of tiny Fieval's own difficult voyage in Steven Spielberg's AN AMERICAN TAIL (1986).
It is with details like the humongous, life-threatening sneakers and encounters with sandwich wrap that ANTZ scores. Another plus are strong vocal characterisations from Sylvester Stallone (as a good-hearted, testosteroney Soldier ant who switches roles with Z), Jane Curtin and Dan Akroyd (as condescending wasps), and Grant Shaud, who would be recognisable anywhere as the office administrator type foreman who tries to get everyone to get back to work (is this what he meant when he quit his role as Miles in Murphy Brown to concentrate on a movie career?).
With rumours of Dreamworks' feud with Pixar and Disney because of the latter's upcoming A BUG'S LIFE, which features a similar storyline and perspective, one hopes that the next animated insect story will deliver more.
The Flying Inkpot's Rating System
* Wait for the TV2 broadcast.
** A little creaky, but still better than staying at home with Gotcha!
*** Pretty good, bring a friend.
**** Amazing, potent stuff.
***** Perfection. See it twice.
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