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| Eric Darnell & Tim Johnson |
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| (the voices of) Woody Allen, Sharon Stone,
Gene Hackman, Sylvester Stallone, Jennifer Lopez, Christopher Walken |
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Anamorphic
widescreen |
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Dolby Digital
5.1 |
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DTS |
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Trailer(s) |
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Featurette(s) |
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Documentary |
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Audio commentary
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Deleted scenes
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Concept art
/ storyboards |
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Multi-angle
feature |
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Weaver
(Sylvester Stallone): Don't you want your aphid beer?
Z-4195 (Woody Allen): Call me crazy, but I have a thing about
drinking from the anus of another creature.
A
worker ant upsets the plans of a would-be militatary dictator when he
kidnaps the colony princess.
 The
first digital animation feature to follow Disney/Pixar's Toy Story
came to the screen courtesy of DreamWorks studios, beating the similarly
themed A Bug's Life by just a few weeks. This more adult-oriented
film benefits from a strong and unique design and an amazing level of
technical proficiency, and its emphasis on gritty textures and huge-scaled
vistas give it a very distinctive style. Much of the film's humor derives
from the fact that Woody Allen lends his recognizable voice talent to
the film's bug protagonist, and many of the funniest lines are based
on mannerisms and neuroses the audience immediately associates with
the characters he usually plays. One of the film's strong points is
the ants' facial design, which allows for truly unprecedented levels
of expressiveness in the animation and an uncanny mimicking of the actors
providing the voices.
The movie does have one major weakness however, and that is its screenplay.
The writers have taken a scattershot approach to story development,
and have ended up incorporating elements of romantic comedy, picaresque
road movie, war film, and social satire, which ends up as a hybrid that
is all over the place and nowhere in particular at the same time. More
than a few story moments seem forced, simply designed to move characters
from one situation to the next, and its frequent shifting of narrative
gears provides a very uneven viewing experience. The attempted genocide
at the end not only seems borderline tasteless, it also doesn't make
sense: how could General Mandible ever expect the colony to survive
without any worker ants? Had the filmmakers concentrated on developing
just one or two of the many interesting ideas and concepts in the screenplay,
it might have resulted in a more gratifying animated film, rather than
one that is merely entertaining. |
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Identical
releases are available for Region 1 and Region 2. A separate release
witha DTS sound mix but none of the special features is available for
Region 1.
The
anamorphic widescreen image is framed at an aspect ratio of approx.
1.78:1. The digital-to-digital transfer might not be quite up there
with Pixar standard-bearer Toy Story 2, but it definitely provides
an impressive picture with great detail and magnificent textures.
The Dolby Digital 5.1 sound mix is likewise very strong, with excellent
directionality and a deep and wide sound stage that provides the great
musical score and fine sound effects with a superb platform.
DreamWorks
releases have generally been a treat on DVD, and this title is no exception.
Perhaps the best feature on this disc is the directors' audio commentary,
which not only adds insight to the technical accomplishments and the
film's story development, but which also includes lots of candid remarks
and ironic jokes about story flaws and development problems. Directors
Eric Darnell and Tim Johnson clearly love the work that has gone into
this film and have a great time talking about it, but never take themselves
or their movie too seriously and provide a truly excellent and entertaining
commentary track. They also talk the viewer through an animation
progression demonstration that shows the dance scene in the bar
move from story reel through two stages of animation to final scene.
This 10-minute sequence provides lots of information on how the animation
process on a film like this works. Another neat feature that delves
into the animation process (again with commentary from the directors)
is the facial animation exploration that shows how the CGI characters'
faces were constructed and animated using elaborate skeleton, muscle
and skin modeling techniques. The character design gallery shows
how many different permutations the filmmakers went through before a
final design was chosen for the characters. The directors provide a
very interesting audio commentary track for this five-minute item. The
ten-minute featurette is an almost purely promotional item but
still contains some moments of interest (and it zips by easily and quickly).
The theatrical trailer rounds out the special features section.The
static menus are nicely designed, incorporating images of characters from
the movie and using the image of a magnifying glass as a central design
element.
Dan
Hassler-Forest
Reviewed: 2001
Click
here for IMDB info on AntZ.
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