A Bug's Life

Year Of Release: 1998

Genre: Adventure

Run Time: 91mns

Age Rating: U (UK)

Director: John Lasseter

Review


Hello, welcome to this, my second review in a series of reviews on Pixar films. A series that is proving to be a lot more intrusive upon my free time than I first thought. This review will be looking at 'A Bug's Life', a film that can proudly hold the title of 'nobody's favourite Pixar film' before glumly trudging off to wave the trophy aloft the podium of 'most forgettable Pixar film'.

Pictured: 'A Bug's Life' is allowed to

stand on the podium as they accept 

their participation award.

As I've grown older and (perhaps disagreeably) wiser, I have come to regard 'A Bug's Life' as the middle child of three. Pixar's first creation had been around for 3 years upon the arrival of 'A Bug's Life' and so the same people who had cooed over 'Toy Story' as it learned to use the potty nary glanced towards 'A Bug's Life', as it competently cocked it's bare buttocks over the toilet on it's first attempt. This being because they were too busy packing their firstborn's lunchbox as they prepared to head off to big boy school. To compound 'A Bug's Life'[s]' ultimate fate, Pixar, being the ever procreative parents that they are, had barely christened their second child before announcing the upcoming arrival of their third. An arrival that promised to be much the same as their first - a sequel if you will! This announcement in turn sent the relatives into a wild tizzy of joy, so much so that they completely overlooked the fact that 'A Bug's Life', was busy in the garden making friends with the neighbour's Pitbull.

Now, I like 'A Bug's Life', however I am more than happy to concede that it is by no means Pixar's finest work. For a start they seem to have taken a step back from the animation quality of their previous work, which I found odd as for me the steps forward that they made in the industry with each subsequent film was an aspect of Pixar that I admire. For them to have released a film in which their characters reflected light off of their carapaces like arthropodan lighthouses must have meant that they were under some kind of time constraints. It was almost as if Pixar had caught wind of another intellectual property that followed a very similar storyline being in production... Anyway I don't care too much whether Pixar copied DreamWorks or vice versa as the latter mentioned company could not hold a candle to the animation quality of even Pixar's worst work. 

'A Bug's Life' makes rude gestures

 to the other films as his parents

 pick him up in their Rolls Royce.

My main point that I want to get across is that I just don't feel like Pixar tried overly hard with 'A Bug's Life', which is annoying as much like that one snotty nosed brat we all knew who could breeze through exams 'without even revising', Pixar did not do a bad enough job to warrant any kind of negative reaction. It holds fairly strong critical acclaim on most sites and whilst I don't necessarily think that it deserves to rot in a stinking pit of shame, I also don't think it deserves a 92% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. The film does keep to Pixar's high standard of charm and wit and the characters are memorable. They are however, in my opinion, some of the least relatable characters that have come out of the production house so far, with (the main character) Flik's idea of sorting out his cock-ups involve begging another group of insects to do it for him under false pretences.

Overall 'A Bug's Life' doesn't hold up as well as other Pixar properties but is still nonetheless a strong film. The Pixar standard of a strong story and an excellent script help this film float effortlessly above the moist bog in which you can find the deformed carcasses of less fortunate animated affairs such as 'Minions'. I must say though that although Pixar had a lot of shortcomings with this film - they certainly managed their objective of making the most curvaceous ant in cinema history with the Princess!
Scoring

Final Score: 14

Footnote (to answer the questions nobody cares about):

Q- When will the quality of your illustrations improve?
A- I believe the phrase in these situations goes along the following lines; You can't polish a turd.

Q- If you could be any celebrity for the day who would you be?
A- John Malkovich.