Written by Senora Bicho
Released in 1998, A Bug’s Life was Pixar’s second animated feature. The film had high expectations after the huge success of Toy Story. While I think that Toy Story is the better film, A Bug’s Life tells an imaginative story that can be enjoyed by the whole family.
A Bug’s Life is a cross between Aesop's fable "The Ant and the Grasshopper” and The Seven Samurai-based comedy The Three Amigos. The ants spend their time working hard harvesting food for the lazy grasshoppers. One of the ants in the colony, Flik (Dave Foley), building inventions designed to make the work easier. However, his latest causes the destruction of the entire harvest. The leader of the grasshopper pack, Hopper (Kevin Spacey), gives the ants until the end of the season to come up with their food or else. Flik decides to leave the colony to help find warrior bugs that can take on the grasshoppers. During his visit to the big city, he mistakes a band of circus bugs looking for work for the warriors that he is looking for. The circus bugs believe that Flik is hiring them for dinner theater and follow him back to the colony. Once the truth is discovered, they band together to try and outwit and defeat the grasshoppers.
What helps Pixar films stand apart from other animated features is the depth of their characters and the strength of their stories and A Bug’s Life is no exception. The vocal talents of Foley and Spacey lead the way along with Julia Louis-Dreyfus, David Hyde Pearce, Madeline Kahn, and Phyllis Diller just to name a few. Denis Leary gets a special mention as the perfectly cast angry ladybug who always gets mistaken for a female.
In addition to this strong foundation, the animation looks fantastic presented in 1080p High Definition with an aspect ratio of 2.35:1. The blades of grass and all other aspects of nature look so realistic it is hard to believe, at times, it is animation. The bugs really come to life on screen with vivid colors and lifelike movement. The detail and clarity are stunning, no doubt helped by the having a digital-to-digital transfer of the source.
Article comments