Animation Defenestration: The one that followed up Toy Story

 

Title: A Bug’s Life

What Year?: 1998

Classification: Runnerup

Rating: That’s Good! (4/4)

 

I have previously commented that when I very first tried writing outside my misbegotten fiction, the very first thing I tried was reviewing animation. That makes animation a big part of the DNA of all my various review features. A major reason why I haven’t come back to it is that I have a broad enough interest to cover literally a hundred years of the field, whereas most of my features have remained focus on the relatively narrow timeframe of 1970s-‘80s. I haven’t yet decided if this is the feature that will break that mold, but I do anticipate relative variety. For this particular review (indeed for my lineup for the coming week), I have one of a few movies that popped up incidentally. As a bonus, it just happens that it was about as old when I first tried animation reviews as those mostly lost reviews are now. With that, I present A Bug’s Life, the second Disney/ Pixar movie and the one that made the studio’s reputation without getting thanks for it.

Our story begins with a colony of anthropomorphic ants completing the harvest. In the process, we meet Princess Atta and Flik, a drone with new ideas. Things take a dark turn early as we discover that the harvest is an offering for Hopper, the leader of a post-apocalyptic gang of grasshoppers. When Flik’s new invention knocks the harvest in the drink, the colony must choose between resistance or starvation. Flik gets approval for an expedition to the wider world to look for allies, and to everyone’s surprise returns alive with a motley band of  bugs for hire. But the newcomers aren’t what they seem, and Hopper is out for blood. The drone and the circus bugs must use brains and brawn to save the queen from the raiders. Can they lead the colony to victory, or is it the ants’ lot to serve the larger insects forever?

A Bug’s Life was the second feature film from Disney and Pixar, following the success of Toy Story in 1995. The story was loosely based on the Kurosawa film The Seven Samurai, previously adapted as The Magnificent Seven and Battle Beyond The Stars. It also had controversial similarities to Dreamworks’ Antz, an apparently independent project released the same year. The voice cast was led by Dave Foley as Flik and Julia Louis-Dreyfuss as Princess Atta, with Kevin Spacey as Hopper, David Hyde Pierce as Slim and Phyllis Diller (see… The Boneyard?) as the ant queen. Other cast included the emerging “regulars” John Ratzenberger, Brad Garrett and Richard Kind. The film was a commercial success with a $363 million box office, comparable to the $373M gross of Toy Story, though its much higher $120M budget reduced its overall profitability. It would become the earliest Disney/ Pixar film not to receive a sequel. Critics increasingly characterized the movie as either weaker than other Disney/ Pixar films or less successful with audiences. The characters of A Bug’s Life were featured in a gag reel for Toy Story 2.

For my experiences, what this film has stirred up in my mind is the question, is the “failed” or “forgotten” Disney movie simply a myth? I’ve been doing this long enough to notice that people are always able to point to Disney films that were in some sense unsuccessful in their own time; if you really do the math, even Fantasia was a devastating failure when it actually came out. (See also Allegro Non Troppo…) For the present movie in particular, we have possibly the reverse. I was there; I went to the theater and bought the tape with my own money; I loved it; most importantly, I never heard anyone else say otherwise. So why is this the one with the reputation of a failure? Going in, I went so far as to watch Toy Story 1 and 2 for context, which just made it it more baffling that this isn’t considered one of Pixar’s very best.

Turning to the movie itself, what stands out front and center is the absolutely beautiful visuals, certainly far ahead of the original Toy Story. There’s a sense of vastness that is never quite intimidating, yet there is also attention to small details, from pebbles to blades of grass to beads of dew. What’s most easily underestimated is the attention to scale, which contributes to many of the best moments. The grasshoppers tower over the ants; Dim the beetle is even more enormous; and all are dwarfed by the kaiju-like bird. (And don’t get me started on the babies…)Then there’s two more things that stand out to me. First, human artifacts appear sparingly, usually in settings removed from the colony, just often enough to give some perspective on the bugs’ world. Second, there is the water physics, which should be outright distracting. We repeatedly see things that make absolutely no sense outside the bugs’ scale from dew drops that can be picked up like soda cans to a rainstorm that looks like the asteroid field of Empire Strikes Back. Yet, I have never found it to divert from the story, nor have a seen it raised as a criticism. I find this all the more impressive after doing my own stories of small-sized civilizations. It’s extremely hard to create such a world without either unquestioned assumptions or excessive explanations, yet this movie presents its world on the bugs’ terms without acting like it’s trying.

With all that said, it is perhaps part of the problem that I haven’t said much about the story or characters. The obvious strengths rise simply from the choice of source material, with problems in execution even then. Flik is very likable, enough to heighten the disappointment when he tries to navigate the devolving situation with deceit, while the other ants are suitably uniform in their adherence to tradition and justifiable fear. The grasshoppers, as noted, are suitably intimidating, without ever descending into illogical supervillainy. On the contrary, they are unsettlingly human in their pettiness, with only Hopper offering enough of a long view to justify greater excesses. By comparison, the circus bugs are the weak link, for reasons that are difficult to explain. To me, the most telling issue is that the story plays up the angle that they are failures even as a circus act, where a more nuanced treatment might have shown their skills actually paying off in a combat/ survival situation. In fact, we get a payoff from moments of relative competence, particularly the early confrontation with the bird and the mantis’s magic act performed under Hopper’s scrutiny, but they are exceptions to the comic tone.

That leaves the “one scene”, and the one that is virtually unavoidable is the finale, or rather the lead-in to it. After Flik’s schemes are played out, he is left at the mercy of Hopper and his remaining goons. Of course, there’s a great interplay between the defiant protagonist and the monologuing villain in full view of the colony. To me, at least, it’s the reactions of the onlookers that have the most impact, and ultimately make the story’s point. It’s especially worthwhile to watch and hear the clear anxiety of Hopper’s brother and second-in-command, voiced by Kind, as Flik confronts the leader with the same arguments he made to his own troops. Then what gets this sequence the slot is really just one shot I’ve always suspected most viewers never noticed; As the ants advance, the grasshopper literally leaps out of his own exoskeleton, leaving the translucent husk to bounce over the backs of the charging horde. It’s another moment that should be distractingly odd if you don’t know the Arthropoda, done so naturally it doesn’t stand out at all.

In conclusion, I come back not to the rating but the question of this film’s legacy and especially its bearing on Disney. I could easily go through several posts ranting about the state of Disney and especially the industry “establishment” that keeps giving their weak to middling offerings more money and accolades than the finest work of any other crew. (See Corpse Bride for the first half of that vent.) In the proverbial light of day, the most tenacious piece of hype to attach itself to Disney, and the most dangerous if their own people ever come around to believing it, is that failure is somehow unusual. On discerning analysis, their real record is that of taking real risks, succeeding often enough to take their losses on the chin, and keeping their older works accessible enough for audiences to change their minds. With that context in mind, A Bug’s Life is only a “failure” in the sense that it didn’t leave a trail of merchandise and debatable sequels. (If it comes to that, if you really want to talk about an undeservedly “forgotten” film, look at Antz, which I very much remember seeing.) The real difference was that even at that late date, sequels to Disney movies, however successful, were still very rare, at least outside the direct-to-video market. Perhaps this was a movie that got lost in the transition; perhaps it was just as well that this one last time, Disney left well enough alone. What we should be grateful for is that we have it on hand to watch, instead of waiting 5-10 years for the Disney vault to open. With that, I’m done for another day.