“I only got twenty-four hours to live, and I ain’t gonna waste it here.”
After ushering in the era of computer-animated feature films with Toy Story, Pixar Animation Studios and director John Lasseter followed up that massively successful debut with another anthropomorphized, family-oriented comedy about the trials and tribulations of an insular tribe of ants. Densely packed with imaginative gags and a thorough thinking-through of its miniaturized world, A Bug’s Life details the quest of eccentric misfit Flik (voiced by Dave Foley) who treks from his isolated anthill to the big city—read: a trash heap beneath a mobile home—in hopes of enlisting the aid of a band of warriors to fight off a gang of menacing grasshoppers that is led by the tyrannical Hopper (Kevin Spacey).
Through a series of hilarious misunderstandings, Flik manages to commission a colorful troupe of third-rate flea circus performers consisting of a ladybug (Denis Leary), a stick bug (David Hyde Pierce), a caterpillar (Joe Ranft), a gypsy moth (Madeline Kahn), a pill bug (Michael McShane), a rhinoceros beetle (Brad Garrett), a praying mantis (Jonathan Harris), and a black widow spider (Bonnie Hunt). With this vibrant ensemble in tow, Flik returns to his colony, romantically spars with Princess Atta (Julie Louis-Dreyfus), convinces his traditionalist ant brethren to undertake the construction of a mechanical bird to scare off the grasshoppers instead of appeasing them with another food offering, and ultimately manages to pull the whole thing off by the skin of his teeth. Throughout, as Flik’s self esteem ebbs and flows, he is encouraged by the unrelenting adulation of young queen ant Dot (Hayden Panettiere).
As the ants adapt their social system to integrate these outsiders in order to combat the looming threat, the film takes on a bit of the allure of Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai. Even so, its unselfconscious embrace of such mythic storytelling aspects, as well as its playful sense of humor and imaginative little world, ensure that its pleasures remain readily accessible to viewers of all ages. Which is to say, kindly, that A Bug’s Life is a children’s movie through-and-through. It’s sufficiently enjoyable for adults to watch with their kids, but it doesn’t capture the entertainment-for-the-whole-family vibe that many of Pixar’s later films achieve, and because of that, it’s become something of a black sheep in the early Pixar golden era.