Ants and communism.......

I saw this the week after I saw Pleasantville. The same thing happened to me where I saw the preview and knew I had to see it. I mean, when the screen started to move underground and they said something about an underground society, I crossed my fingers and said "it's about ants, it's about ants..."

It was about ants. Ants have always been an interest of mine. What got me interested in them was the video game Sim Ant (don't know who's heard of Maxis' Sim games). Anyway, Antz lived up to my expectations as a fun, intriguing, and hilarious movie on par with Sim Ant.

The premise of Antz is actually very similar to that of Pleasantville. An isolated society where the people are little more than robots, almost communist in nature. Our hero, Z, wants to change everything...but with a voice like Woody Allen's, who's going to listen to you?

Yeah, Z's voice does get annoying at times, so don't watch it if you have a headache. However, there are other colorful characters who round out the movie and make it worthwhile. It goes deep into the world of ants, and one can learn a lot about them. True, they don't have antennae in the movie, along with several other inaccuracies, but that's the cost of making the movie enjoyable.

Insectopia alone is worth the rental price of the movie. A huge, garbage-filled place in the middle of...well, I won't tell you. I'll tell you that there's a hilarious dung beetle, though. Here's a great line spoken by that dung beetle:

"This stuff tastes like cra p. Hey, it is cra p!" (had to put a typo there, or I'd get in trouble).

I don't know if you've figured out the basis for the name of the movie or not. It's called Antz, and it's about an ant named Z, or Ant Z. Put it together...

The ending is rather surprising. They zoom out from an image of the ant colony, and...well...you'll see.