Pixar Playlist #2 - A Bug's Life

Ladies and gentlemen, whether you like it or not: The Pixar Playlist

Goddamn it, I thought I’d gotten away from Kevin Spacey, f*ck this guy! I guess it’s time for A Bug’s Life! Released in 1998, A Bugs Life is notoriously started a spat between Disney and Dreamworks, as Disney conveniently stated the release day for A Bug’s Life on the same day as Dreamworks’ Antz film. The result of this is for another day, maybe…

But A Bugs life has a pretty positive reputation, a 92% rating on Rotten Tomatoes and an average 7.9/10 and a respectable 79% audience score with an average 3.3/5. It made $380m on its $120m budget, which is a big budget considering the first movie had ¼ of that.

I won’t lie, I don’t like this film very much, so let’s start with the narrative

The film is based on the Aesop fable: The Ant and the Grasshopper, where an Ant does all the work and the Grasshopper is lazy, with the result that whilst the Ant is safe, the Grasshopper starves. A Bug's Life asks the question: What if the Grasshoppers instead used fear tactics to make the Ants do it for them? And what if it sucked?

We’re introduced to Flik, an ant who’s quirky and inventive, and by quirky I mean he’s a walking disaster area. When one of his inventions destroys the tower of food the other ants have prepared for the grasshoppers, the grasshoppers, lead by Hopper (ha, clever) demands twice as much before the winter. With barely enough time to get their own food, let alone find enough for a double order (why don’t they just rebuild the tower with the food they gathered, it can’t have fallen far?) Flik is told to go find help, although it’s more an excuse to get him out of the way whilst the others do what they can to rebuild the food tower.

We’re then introduced to the a circus troupe lead by PT Flea, a stick insect named Slim, A caterpillar named Heimlich, A ladybug named Francis, A praying mantice named Manny (really?), a gypsy moth named Gypsy (of course) and a black widow spider named Rosie. Through a comical misunderstanding they’re confused for warriors and Flik brings them back to his hive. When they reveal the truth, they accuse Flik of being deceitful, wait, what?

Anyway, with the colony’s adulation, the group agree to stay, at least come up with a plan whilst Flik gets them out. Yay, it’s a liar revealed story, I swear even in 1998 this trope was overused trite. Since Grasshoppers are afraid of birds, they create a fake bird, with as much effort that could probably be used to fetch all the food they need.

Anyway, shockingly the liar is eventually revealed and the plot comes to a screeching halt for the next 5 minutes (worth noting that whilst Flik loses everything, the circus troupe lose nothing, despite also being involved in the lie) and Flik is brought out of his funk thanks to a motivational speech just as the grasshoppers are coming back.

Yeah, maybe it’s because I’m looking at it from a 2018 perspective but I hold no nostalgia to this movie, so there’s little other perspective I can bring to it but this story is cliché garbage. I’ll admit it’s relatively harmless, it’s not like Shark Tale where context damages the moral, thankfully, but it’s fairly clear this is targeted towards little kids, a younger audience than even the regular Pixar films.

The character of Flik is a cliché, the guy who nobody listens to because he’s different/walking disaster area and all the other characters are one-note stereotypes. I have little to say about any of them

So we’ll move onto the animation. I hear this was a complicated project for Pixar and their computers could barely keep up with the number of characters moving on screen with the required detail. I’ll admit, the animation itself is fine, the movements smooth but I do have some issues when it comes to the aesthetic of the film.

In my opinion, A Bugs Life is ugly, and I think a lot of it could come down to limitations with software, but they could’ve spiced up the colour palate a little. Lots of greens, the ants are white and purple for some reason, the backgrounds too, except maybe during the bug city scene.

Only a couple of jokes in the climax really landed with me, maybe I’m being a little harsh, I can see why this one is largely forgotten

A Bugs Life tells a cliché story, and finds no unique angle to tell it from to make it more interesting. The animation is smooth but the designs leave much to be desired, I can see why a Bug’s Life never got a full on sequel.

#1 Toy Story

#2 A Bug’s Life