Released 1998
Animated
Voices Woody Allen, Sharon Stone, Gene Hackman, Sylvester Stallone, Christopher Walken, Danny Glover, Dan Aykroyd, Jane Curtin, Anne Bancroft, Jennifer Lopez, John Mahoney, Grant Shaud, Paul Mazursky
Directed by Eric Darnell, Lawrence Guterman

"Antz" rejoices in the fact that a cartoon can show us anything. It's so free, it turns visual cartwheels. It enters into a microscopic world--an ant colony beneath Central Park--and makes it into a world so vast and threatening that comparisons with "Star Wars" are not unjustified.

And it's sharp and funny--not a children's movie, but one of those hybrids that works on different levels for different ages. The kids will enjoy it when the hero and his girl get stuck in some gum on the bottom of a running shoe. Older viewers will understand the hero's complaint that it's not easy "when you're the middle child in a family of five million."

The story mixes adventure with political parable. As it begins, every ant in the colony goes dutifully about its age-old assignment, never thinking to question why some are workers, some are warriors, and only one can be the queen. Then the little ant named Z (voice by Woody Allen) develops that attribute that an ant colony has no room for, a mind of his own. "I'm supposed to do everything for the colony?" he asks on a psychiatrist's couch. "And what about my needs?"

The visuals are joined to a screenplay with wickedly amusing dialogue and lots of cross-references to current culture. ("All we are saying," chants an ant chorus, "is, give Z a chance!"). Eric Darnell and Tim Johnson, who co-directed the film, and Todd Alcot, Chris Weitz and Paul Weitz, who wrote it, lead a team of gifted animators in telling a fable with the resonance of Animal Farm. And we sense Woody Allen's satirical spirit sneaking through in some lines; instead of attacking the termites, he suggests, why not try subverting them with campaign contributions?

Summary by Roger Ebert