Antz

So DreamWorks' Antz got to be first out of the gate in the Computer-Animated Insect Sweepstakes, beating Disney/Pixar's A Bug's Life both on the big screen and onto the video shelves. The oddly spelled title actually refers to the story's protagonist, a lowly and unfulfilled worker ant named Z (Woody Allen). Trapped in the ant colony's rigid caste system, Z longs to find his own destiny, which might even include romancing the unapproachable Princess Bala (Sharon Stone). In order to catch Bala's eye, Z switches places with his soldier ant pal Weaver (Sylvester Stallone), unwittingly setting off a social revolution. Even more unwittingly, he discovers that head soldier General Mandible (Gene Hackman) has sinister plans for the colony. The goofy socio-political overtones of Z's struggle for individuality are good for a few chuckles, though it's not entirely clear from one moment to the next what the "message" is. Still, it's hard not to be caught up in the moment while watching Antz. The visuals are nothing short of spectacular, in terms of both scale and individual detail. The characters' movements and reactions are so complete that every ant becomes real on the screen. Yet, with so much attention lavished on giving the characters personality, Antz never feels merely showy, thanks, in part, to the impressive cast of voice talent, from Hackman as the eugenically-inclined dictator-in-waiting to Christopher Walken as his morally ambivalent henchman, from Stallone deftly playing good-natured lug to Dan Aykroyd and Jane Curtin as a pair of WASP-ish wasps named Chip and Muffy. But the star of the show is Woody Allen, bringing his inimitable, anxiety-ridden nebbishness to Z. His voice performance is one of several reasons Antz is plenty of fun, if often in an inside-jokey, over the heads of kids kind of way. As a story it's a little uneven, but it has succeeded at setting a reasonably high bar for the next computer-generated bug film to jump over with all six legs. Recommended. (S. Renshaw)