An ant colony spends its days gathering food for the grasshoppers who provide protection. When an accident prone ant named Flik accidentally sabotages the offering and the evil grasshopper leader threatens to kill the colony if they do not have double the food by the end of summer, Flik sets out on a mission to find heroic ants to protect his kind from the grasshoppers. Instead of heroes he comes back with a band of misfit circus performers who endear themselves to the ants and come up with a crazy plan to rid the colony of the grasshoppers. When I decided to revisit the Pixar films and looked over the digital movies they made, I was surprised that A Bug's Life was an output of that studio. Now having rewatched the movie its no shock that I had disassociated it. A Bug's Life is kind of a lame movie, the type of animated film that blends in with the rest of the crop and doesn't meet the standards that Pixar has set, those standards being endearing characters, intelligent plotting, and material that appeals to adults as well as children. On top of not meeting these criterion, I didn't even find the animation to be very inspired. Also insects are simply off putting and this movie just can't make them likable. I did like some of the sequences in the film, particularly some of the circus scenes and the segment with the manufactured bird. I also enjoyed some of the voicework as well, particularly by Kevin Spacey and Richard Kind as two of the grasshoppers. Still this is not the kind of work indicative of its makers, and considering that it was written and directed by Pixar titans John Lasseter and Andrew Stanton, this one really is a disappointment.
This was the short that played before A Bug's Life during its theatrical run and is also available on the DVD. I've posted it below as well. It is a nice little Academy Award winning short about an old man in the park contesting himself in a chess game.
