A BUG’S LIFE

US, 1998, 96 minutes, Colour.
Voices of: Dave Foley, Kevin Spacey, Julia Louis -Dreyfus, Hayden Pannetier, Phyllis Diller, Richard Kind, David Hyde -Pierce, Joe Ranft, Dennis Leary, Madeleine Kahn, Bonnie Hunt, John Ratzenberger, Brad Garrett.
Directed by John Lasseter and Andrew Stanton.

It has been done before, but why should the animal world be the multi-million dollar Hollywood symbol for contemporary allegories of human life? What was it in the American psyche that Pixar Studios and Dreamworks Studios recognised that persuaded them to spend years computer-animating the movies A Bug's Life and Antz and unleash them on willing and, as it turned out, eager audiences? I am not sure that many humans have a passion for ants, but we are certainly far more sympathetic after these movies than we were before.

The 'done-before' refers to Mr Bug Goes to Town, directed by Dave Fleischer in 1941 which, after not too successful a box-office response, was given a zippier title, Hoppity Goes to Town. It was the struggle between insects and humans (probably relevant in the atmosphere of World War II and the imminent attack on Pearl Harbour).

The 'done before' also refers to 1984's George Orwell's allegory of half a century ago, Animal Farm, which was filmed in animation in Britain and released in 1955, an allegory of tyranny amongst the animal themselves and reflecting Western attitudes towards the dominating socialism of Stalinist Russia.

Maybe animals are what T.S.Eliot calls 'objective correlatives', poetic and symbolic equivalents of human experience. But, it is A Bug's Life, lighter to look at and lighter to feel (despite the genuine menace of the grasshoppers and their attempts to mimic the pigs of Animal Farm - some insects, the grasshoppers, are more equal than others). A Bug's Life has more 'international policy' undertones, the defence of the smaller and poorer against the invaders and the exploiters. The musical score of A Bug's Life is often reminiscent of those British movies of the 40s and 50s where the gallant forces prepare to ward of the attacking Luftwaffe. If you see the film again, listen to the score when the insects are constructing the bird which will frighten away the grasshoppers.

A Bug's Life very quickly made more than a million dollars at the American box-office and was just as successful elsewhere. What was it awakening in us about ourselves?

Our hero ant (well, not initially), voiced by comedian Dave Foley, is called Flik. He is an extravert. In fact, it is difficult to find any introverts in the colony. It is ruled over by Phyllis Diller as queen! He is a dreamer, full of ideas and imagining possibilities. He has invented a harvester, which not only does not go down too well with the ultra-traditional and unimaginative colony and its leaders, it also helps accidentally lose and destroy all the food the colony has been collecting as tribute for the grasshoppers. Flik gets the flick.

Only Flik could see the possibilities in the dead-end flea circus characters as defending the colony. And it is Flik who invents the giant bird to defend the colony. And it is Flik who takes the blame when things go wrong. But, the experience of exile gives him time for himself, to be a bit more introspective, to examine himself, to discover a touch of introversion. Nor can he just simply dream or 'perceive'. It is time for action, for judgment, to defend the colony. He loves the colony - and, rather unawares, he is in love with Princess Atta. Values are looming. And he has to be practical. The bird he builds is not just an invention. It has to work in the here and now.

Flik has had an 'Inner Awakening' experience.

The point about Flik's inner awakening is that it is not just for himself but for the colony. After all, when he is disheartened, it is Dot who offers him a rock and asks him to imagine. And the point is not lost on Hopper. He terrorises his brother and the revelling grasshoppers and insists they go back to Ant Island just to get revenge on Flik. One ant with an idea can change a colony. And Flik does, telling Hopper straight about how the grasshoppers are bullies, are afraid of the ants who are, at least, their equals.

Francis, the male ladybug (voiced by Denis Leary) gets angry at being mistaken for a female ladybug. His time in the colony leads him to the children and to play with them. But Francis also discovers, as Slim the sticklike praying mantis (voiced prissily by Frasier's David Hyde Pierce), that he has been able to get in touch with his feminine side.

These ant colonies are ruled by queens, tough queens, the bugs by Phyllis Diller and the antz by Anne Bancroft. Both colonies have queens-in-waiting in Princess Sharon Stone and Princess Julia Louis -Dreyfuss, neither of them shrinking violets. But each of them has to be rescued by the heroes. It was Julia Roberts at the end of Pretty Woman who replies to Richard Gere's question about the prince rescuing the princess, 'She rescues him right back'. The inner awakening that both movies illustrate is that the women are supported by their animus figures and the men get in touch with their anima figures.

I'm not sure how many of these thoughts were in the minds of the screenwriters - although the pressbook for A Bug's Life describes Flik as 'an original thinker out of step with the rest of the more traditionally minded colony - but their ants have turned out to be fine symbolic psychological types.

1.The impact of the film? Entertaining? The Pixar tradition? (Comparison with Antz which was released at the same time?)

2.The quality of the animation: the layouts, the detail, the anthill, the creatures, the range of bugs in the circus? The grasshoppers? The action? The comedy sequences? The musical score?

3.The cast: the range of voices, the comic qualities? Kevin Spacey’s sense of menace?

4.The allegory for human experience? Commentators saying that it was a version of The Seven Samurai and The Magnificent Seven? The plot? The themes? The social concern?

5.Audience response to ants, grasshoppers, bugs? Serious and comic?

6.The opening, the ants, their characters? Collecting food? The leaf and their fear?

7.The line, the guide, the gap in the line? The princess and her training? The role of the queen (and Phyllis Diller’s voice)?

8.Dot, the princess’s younger sister, her trying to fly? Flik, his inventions, collecting the food, creating mayhem? His telescope? The reaction of the traditionalists?

9.The lecture on the seed? The use? The imagination? Dot and her comment that it was a rock?

10.The grasshoppers, their menace, the demands on the ants? The food, the pile? Tipping the food into the pool? Flik waiting in the cave?

11.The grasshoppers, the invasion, Hopper and his character, the brother and the story? The rules of leadership and the response?

12.Flik, arguing all aspects of the case, leaving the island, wanting the ants to fight back?

13.Flik’s journey, his character in himself, good-hearted, awkward? Inventive and imaginative?

14.The circus, the range of bugs? Francis as the male ladybug? Slim? Stick? The humour of the bugs and their performance?

15.The machine to help with the collecting? The invention of the flying bird? Building it, manoeuvring it?

16.The grasshoppers, Mexico? The ants and the grasshoppers keeping them in line?

17.Playing with the bird, the attack, battle stations?

18.The arrival of the bugs, the warriors, the ants believing them? The preparation for the combat?

19.Dot, her being pursued, flying? The telling of the seed story?

20.The circus performances, Hopper’s gross response?

21.The bird, the fire? Flik and his defying of Hopper?

22.The rain, the real bird?

23.Flik, reinstated, the princess and her appreciation of him? Dot and her soft spot? The queen and her reaction?

24.The happy conclusion, ‘The Time of Your Life’? The humour of the outtakes during the final credits?