A Bug's Life: We Could All Learn Something From A Little Ant!

When there is nothing on television during the evening that I find appealing especially during the gap between football and baseball season, our family watches a lot of movies. I’ve found that most of the programming that is on television now is either “stupid, violent, or too sexual” for young, impressionable children to watch. Even the cartoons on the Cartoon Network are really rather lame at times.

So, when there is absolutely nothing on television, we reach quite often for my son’s copy A Bug’s Life and play it in the VCR.

A Bug’s Life was created by the Pixar who are the same folks who produced the Toy Story series of movies. A Bug’s Life is the same high quality format as those movies and I am really impressed with the artistry of the movie. Everything is very detailed and colorful and attractive.

The basic story of A Bug’s Life centers around a colony of ants. Every year, the ants gather food for the grasshoppers as a food offering. The grasshoppers offer their ability to protect the ants from predators in exchange for the food. What is so silly about this is that there is no evidence that there is a threat from other bugs at all! So, the ants gather food onto an offering stone and then wait for the grasshoppers to eat and leave while they are inside the anthill.

This year, the Queen ant is training her daughter to do this task. She is trying to supervise the harvest and her mother is explaining the process, which has been going on for quite some time. Each of the ants harvests the grain as they did before, one at a time except for a rather industrious ant named Flick.

When the ants are traditionally gathering the harvest for the grasshoppers under the supervision of Princess Atta and the Queen, Flick uses a grass-cutting machine that he invented to cut the stalk and extract the grain. Unfortunately Flick is also a klutz, and accidentally throws the harvest into the lake just at the time that the Grasshoppers come to eat.

The grasshoppers led by Hopper, a very mean insect, are not very happy about this and order twice the amount of food for when they return. This causes a problem within the colony because they won’t be able to have food for themselves if they do this for the grasshoppers. Flick offers to go find some really tough bugs to fight the grasshoppers so that the ants can defend themselves. In the meantime, the other ants are rather glad that he has gone so that they can have some peace around there.

In the city, Flick thinks he has found some in the city, but what he's found is a circus troupe. After the circus bugs manage to escape some really big flies who were after them, they agree to go with Flick back to the colony to
“perform” for their entertainment. What they don’t understand though is that Flick and the other ants believe they are going to fight the grasshoppers. After this, the circus bugs try to leave, but Flick persuades them to stay and help participate in one of his inventions to help fight Hopper and the other grasshoppers.

As with all lies, the truth usually comes out and not in a good way, and Flick must find some way to save everyone in the end.

In conclusion, A Bug's Life is a great cartoon adventure that is very unique and humorous for people of all ages. There are parodies of many other movies within the scenes and that will bring extra enjoyment to adults.

In addition, the out takes for A Bug's Life are absolutely hysterical. My son constantly rewinds the tape to play that over and over again and laugh.

Lessons learned by watching A Bugs Life include the following:
1. There are always repercussions to lies. Eventually all lies are found out in the end.
2. Being resistant to positive change is not good. Just because something has been done that way "forever" doesn't mean that it is the best way to do it.
3. Blackmail doesn't pay. If you try to blackmail a person, you usually have something very bad happen to you in return.
4. Believing in yourself is the best way to go. Each person has positive qualities and no matter what someone else says about you, you have value and worth.

Therefore, I highly recommend A Bug’s Life for purchase. It is not only is it enjoyable to watch the first time but the twenty-first time as well.

Note: If you click on the half link on the side of this review, you will see some great deals on this movie at Half.com. The last time I checked you could get a copy of this movie for less than $8, which is a fantastic buy!