Antz

Deconstructing Z

Z is troubled. He tells his therapist (in an attempt to get in touch with his inner maggot) that he hates his job, he has feelings of abandonment (which he attributes to being the middle child in a family of five million), and he feels completely out of step with everyone else. So begins Antz, the computer-generated animated epic from Dreamworks. Z (voiced by Woody Allen), or Z-4195 to give him his full title, is a worker ant, and spends every day with his fellow workers digging (and complaining) the Megatunnel, a grand project which will transform the life of the ant colony (or so they have been told). One night , while drinking in the ant bar with his friend Weaver, a soldier ant (Sylvester Stallone), he is asked to dance by a beautiful ant he has never seen before. He is instantly smitten. He also causes a riot by refusing to dance like everyone else. In the ensuing chaos, the beautiful ant slips away. Unfortunately, she is the rather spoiled Princess Bala (Sharon Stone) , daughter of the ant colony queen. Meanwhile, General Mandible (Gene Hackman) is plotting secretly to consolidate his power in the colony.

Writers Todd Alcott and Chris Weitz are obviously Woody Allen fans because the persona of Z is pure (and vintage) Woody. The nerdy, timid personality, the wry and self-deprecatory humour, killer one-liners and even the physical mannerisms are all captured perfectly and Z's struggle to come to terms with the pointlessness of life or to meet the right girl..I mean... ant is a theme you could find in a lot of Allen's better movies.It also reminds me (in a roundabout way) of Modern Times, where a hapless cog in an industrial complex (Charlie Chaplin) sets off social change completely by accident.

Antz will inevitably be compared to Toy Story. However, Antz is far more complex and darker than Toy Story - producing cuddly merchandise spin-offs was definitely not top of the agenda for the makers of this movie. This is even reflected in the cast - Toy Story had Tom Hanks and Tim Allen and Antz has Woody Allen, Gene Hackman and Christopher Walken. As Z himself puts it, Antz is a "boy meets girl, boy gets girl, boy changes underlying social order"-type tale. It is the social order aspects of the story that provide the darker moments. General Mandible decides that he will undermine the queen by removing the soldiers loyal to her. He achieves this by ordering the soldiers to make an attack on a nearby termite mound, knowing it will be a suicide mission. As one of the soldier ants points out the termites are "...five times our size and shoot acid from their foreheads". The battle scene between the ants and the termites is a gripping sequence and far too scary for small children (it is rated 7 years and over in Stockholm). In fact, it is a bit reminiscent of the final battle scene in Starship Troopers (though obviously far less gory). It certain silenced the little mites who had been happily munching popcorn and talking until that point at the screening I attended.

Z and Bala are thrown together by circumstance, far away from the colony, and decide to strike out for themselves. Z had been the only survivor of the termite battle and the dying words of one of the other soldiers advised Z not to spend the rest of his life obeying orders. They embark upon a journey to a rumoured insect paradise called Insectopia. This journey provides some of the best sequences of the movie - a hilarious encounter with a couple of WASPish wasps (Dan Ackroyd and Jane Curtain) and a simply glorious sequence when numerous insects descend on a litterbin.

The animation throughout the movie is superb - from portraying subtle facial expressions to the big action sequences, where the animation seems almost three-dimensional. There is no shortage of imagination here, and few slack moments either.

The voice characterisations are uniformly excellent - Allen, Hackman and Stallone are particularly good. If Toy Story was the first computer animation blockbuster (and a fine movie), Antz is the first computer animated movie for adults :- it is evident there was as much attention spent on producing a smart and pleasing story as on delivering breath-taking visual effects. If I have any criticism about this movie, it is that the average 7-year-old will probably not get any of the gags. Best leave them at home.

Directed by Eric Darnell and Lawrence Gutermann.

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