Review of A Bug's Life (1998) by Siye%20 C — 29 Mar 2018

When an ant colony's food offering to a gang of greedy grasshoppers ends up getting accidentally destroyed by the idealistic inventor ant named Flik (Dave Foley), the grasshopper leader Hopper (Kevin Spacey) threatens the colony with destruction if they don't give them a larger offering. Leaving the colony to find bigger bugs to fight off the grasshoppers, Flik thinks he's found the perfect fighters in the form of a group of circus bugs, But when he finds out the truth, Flik must now use all of his skills as an inventor to stop Hopper and his gang forever...

Although this film, being only the third computer-animated film in existance at the time and following in the footsteps of Toy Story, A Bug's Life may lack the originality of Pixar's first film in terms of storytelling, but the background animation of the world of the bugs is so good, that it still looks incredible today. The character designs, despite not looking as realistic as the insects of Dreamworks's Antz also looks really impressive compared to CGI designs at the time.

Although some of the main characters aren't that interesting, the circus bugs and the grasshoppers steal the show in terms of humour, with the funniest moments coming from Richard Kind's Molt and the late Joe Ranft's German caterpillar Heimlich and although what he did throughout his career was horrible and should not be encouraged, Kevin Spacey's sarcastic, yet intimidating performance as Hopper makes this character, one of the most under-rated Pixar villians.

Overall, A Bug's Life is a really entertaining film of miniature proportions that's still packs a tiny punch.