Wolff rating: GOOD
Plot summary: A very Woody-Allen-like ant is fed up with his life in the colony.
Biased, pithy comments: With an all-star cast (including Allen as the lead voice) and some neat animation by Pacific Digital, this is a laugh-out-loud funny movie with some serious tension and, surprisingly, a bit of a political agenda. The story was creative and the characters, though familiar if you've seen nearly any other movie with Allen in it, fun; I found myself rooting for Stallone's and Lopez's ants more than the main characters. This movie has been frequently compared to another digital ant movie that came out just after it by a competing studio (namely ``A Bug's Life'') and it's hard not to make the comparison here, given their similar biological domain. It's not really fair to either of them, though, since ``Bug's Life'' is really a kid's movie following ``The Three Amigos'' mold, while this is simply a Woody Allen movie with lots of bug jokes in it. As a result, ``Antz'' is almost not for kids at all---there are sex jokes that they won't get (and someone will have to answer little Jimmy when he asks ``What does `erotic' mean?''), political jokes that they won't even recognize as jokes, and a fair amount of violence and death (well, for a non-Japanese cartoon).
Other Notes: ``The workers control the means of production!''
How many times I have seen it: x1
Starring: Woody Allen, Sharon Stone, Gene Hackman, Sylvester Stallone, Christopher Walken, Jennifer Lopez.
Directed by: Eric Darnell and Lawrence Guterman