A Bug's Life

Yesterday, I enjoyed the last Lou Malnati's pizza I will have until Christmas break, and while I was enshrined in deep dish heaven, my brother and I revisited A Bug's Life, which revealed itself to be an underrated enry in the Pixar universe.

While it is not on the same level as Wall-E or the Toy Story films, A Bug's Life does have several notable qualities.

Animation

It should come as no surprise that the animation in a Pixar film is stellar, but the 3-d world of this film brings the bug universe to our television sets, a world where grass towers over our character's heads and simple raindrops are the most damaging of natural disasters. This is the kind of world that Robert Frost would have loved.

Humor

Again, this is no surprise, but the humor of A Bug's Life is wickedly clever to the insect world. For example, one of the lead characters is a MALE LADYBUG named FRANCIS, brilliantly voiced by Denis Leary. Maybe I'm just a sucker for clever inconsistencies like this that move beyond the paradigm, but that's one of the funniest Pixar jokes I've ever seen! Also, there are hilarious segments involving Bug Zappers, Flies, and other in-jokes that any Entomologist will adore.

Kevin Spacey

I have always been a fan of Spacey, as his versatility and talent has ensured that he'll be one of the more consistent and memorable actors of our time. Pixar excels at casting unexpected actors for their voice parts, and Spacey's casting as the evil villain of the film, Hopper the grasshopper, is the standout role is a uniformly excellent.

Spacey is deliciously evil, here, growling his lines in an intimidating timber of a voice that sounds nothing like the weak, pathetic sale manager from Glengarry Glen Ross or the loser suburban dad of American Beauty. Conniving, deadly, and disgusting as a parasite, Spacey is excellent.