This is an animated movie that has more famous voices in it than Bedfont used to get home fans in the CCL. OK take a deep breath and try reading this lot… Woody Allen, Dan Aykroyd, Anne Bancroft, Jane Curtin, Danny Glover, Gene Hackman, Jennifer Lopez, John Mahoney, Paul Mazursky, Grant Shaud, Sylvester Stallone, Sharon Stone and Christopher Walken. With that kind of action going on behind the mike this has to have been a huge box office success. Let me check *dramatic pause* and we have just shy of $172m on a budget of $100m which I would assume would not include the marketing budget but I am not sure on that. In all honestly it should have pulled those types of figures as I am sure some pockets were bulging at the end of the day.
The 1998 story revolves around Z which is short for Z and four numbers but I cannot be asked to dig that out to review a cartoon. Z is feeling insignificant in the conformity system of the ant colony. He accidently gets to meet the beautiful princess who is feeling similar but at the complete opposite end of the social scale. He wants to meet her again and hatches a plan to swap positions with one of the soldier ants. He manages to upset the soldiers general Gene Hackman, whilst the general is also cooking up a plan for the superior Soldier race to take over and kill off the weaker workers. The princess and the Z decide they are going to leave the group and head off to some fictional land of wonder for ants. OK I will look this up... its called Insectopia and Z’s full name is Z- 4195 (HAPPY?) where the streets are paved with gold and the clouds are in fact leaves just to feed the ants. So how will Z rescue his co-workers keep the princess and fight off the far stronger soldier ants. How damn it HOW?
Well that would be telling and I have to admit to enjoying this movie. Its one of those movies where I did not appreciate how many actual starts were in it. I was there going that’s not a bad Sylvester Stallone impression and that sound a little like Gene Hackman only to get the end credits and go holy shit how many stars did you get for this movie!! The story was written for Woody Allen’s voice all day long and he plays it completely as his himself so is spot on. It works on many different levels and if you haven’t seen it go get some childminding gigs to be able to give this a go.
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