Ten Stars or Less

Thank God we have come a long way in 20 years. Dreamworks first major animated release was Antz, way back in 1998. If you took a moment to look at the voice cast alone, you’d think this movie was probably one of the most dedicated movies of all-time. Sadly the excitement for the movie ended with the who’s who of names, like Woody Allen, Sylvester Stallone, Jennifer Lopez, Gene Hackman, Dan Aykroyd, and Anne Bancroft. Listening to Allen voice an ant for 1:23 was really not my idea of a fun time at the movies. The only things that I feel the writers got right was Stallone’s ant looked just like him, rugged and jacked. Hackman’s ant was the perfect antagonist, because no matter what else he’s done in his career, he was at his best as Lex Luger in Superman. Playing a bad guy ant who wanted to seize power, while manipulating everyone seemed to fit his MO perfectly. If you blinked, you may have mixed Christopher Walken voicing an ant, and we all know how people love to do Walken impersonations. I think I mentioned it before, but I am so thankful that animation studios have finally moved away from introducing us to tiny insects or bugs who happen to have personalities and live life similar to humans. This may actually all be true, but since none of us are actually ants or bees, we will never know. These early stories lacked heart and compassion that we have come to fall in love with over the last few years. All these movies are still focused on family, with some adult humor thrown in to keep us entertainment, but these stories lack so much to engage us or even entertain us. Watching Stallone’s ant character ask out Lopez’s ant character just made me shake my head. At no point in real life would that actually happen, so I had a hard time taking this movie seriously. I’m happy I watched this to cross another movie off my watch list, but I have no desire to watch this film again. 1/10