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Antz
Threat advisory: High - High risk of entertaining activities
Movie propaganda
Every ant has his day.
With a superstar cast and breakthrough visual effects, DreamWorks' spectacular comedy adventure, Antz, became king of the hill with audiences and movie critics alike. Everyone digz Antz!
Life is no picnic for Z (Woody Allen), a small worker ant with some very big ideas whose chances of landing the beautiful Princess Bala (Sharon Stone) are literally one in a billion. But when Z convinces his soldier ant buddy to switch places with him, his simple life takes a wild turn. From his battles in the termite war to his search for Insectopia, Z's adventures land him in a final confrontation with the ruthless General Mandible (Gene Hackman) who has planned to liquidate the colony. Once the most insignificant of workers, Z may just turn out to be the biggest hero of them all!
Persons of interest
- Woody Allen .... Z
- Dan Aykroyd .... Chip
- Anne Bancroft .... Queen
- Jane Curtin .... Muffy
- Danny Glover .... Barbatus
- Gene Hackman .... General Mandible
- Jennifer Lopez .... Azteca
- John Mahoney .... Grebs
- Paul Mazursky .... Psychologist
- Grant Shaud .... Foreman
- Sylvester Stallone .... Weaver
- Sharon Stone .... Princess Bala
- Christopher Walken .... Colonel Cutter
- Todd Alcott .... Screenwriter
- Chris Weitz .... Screenwriter
- Paul Weitz .... Screenwriter
- Eric Darnell .... Director
- Tim Johnson .... Director
Cinematic intelligence sources
- Studios and distributors:
Intelligence analyst
Special Agent Matti
Theatrical report
Woody Allen. With extra feet.
Antz has been (rightly) touted as the big new thing: a completely CGI feature film. Mulan featured some great CGI scenes, most notably the "cast of thousands" epic shots, but was still mostly made the old-fashioned way. Antz is tuto digitale.
So what is left when you take out the pretty pictures (think about Jurassic Park)? Woody Allen. With extra feet. Antz is your basic loser in the big city tries to break out of the mould and saves the world in doing so (it's animation: there has to be a happy ending). Of course, Z (voiced by Woody) is a neurotic, wise-cracking, maladapted bozo (starting to sound familiar?) who, after saving the world, gets the bad guy killed in an accident, has the fairy princess fall in love with him and becomes hero to all. While remaining a neurotic, wise-cracking, maladapted bozo. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même. (Now does it sound familiar?)
To make things even more obvious, the writers have included several homages to Woody, notably the off camera shots (characters walk out of shot while still talking, leaving the viewer with an empty frame). If you don't know anything about Woody these past paragraphs won't mean anything to you, but I am here to educate, not merely entertain.
On to more entertaining things. The animation is very obviously CGI, but that is something you will all have to get used to. Like you did with Technicolour, blue-screen, Dolby, THX surround sound and other marvellous new inventions. Not that it's hugely distracting, but it is odd at first. The dialogue is a mix of standard Hollywood and standard Woody: often funny, occasionally brilliant. The voicing cast is a huge collection of stars whose agent can't get them work in real films, but they do their characters very well. If you don't mind recognising every character who speaks. Hollywood can be very in bred at times. [At times? - Director of Intelligence.]
Antz is a very adult film in a (supposedly for) child's body. The story is good (predictable, but that's all part of the charm, isn't it? Who wants to see a film where you don't know what's going to happen next?), the pacing is good, the directing is good... everything about it is good. But that's all. This is a good film, a very good film, in fact, but not a great one. For a great film, try... u minutes... damn. It's too early in the morning for real cross-referencing. You'll just have to find one for yourself.
Security censorship classification
PG (Low level violence)
Surveillance time
83 minutes (1:23 hours)
Not for public release in Australia before date
DVD retail: 7 May 1999
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CGI
Stands for Computer Generated Imagery and means imagery that has been generated on a computer. I suppose that I must now use HGI for hand generated imagery, PGI for photocopier generated imagery, VGI for video camera generated imagery, AGI for Arriflex generated imagery and YGI for yellow snow generated imagery.
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