Antz - signature edition - reviewed by Knightmare

Let's face it, when you're the animated brainchild of a company other than Disney, you don't normally get a lot of attention. I meanm how is it possible.
But as we all know Antz made heads turn in the direction of Dreamworkd when it came out, several weeks earlier than Disney's effort A Bug's Life.
And Antz truly deserved all the attention it got, but to compare it to A Bug's Life would be silly because the two films are very different indeed even though they both revolve around a cast of insects and were both created entirely on computers.

Antz, especially compared to ABug's Life, is a very serious film aimed directly at a mature audiance, it has some great humour as well, but most of it would slip by children. The movie also contains some scenes that would never have been allowed past the Disney censorship machine.
The movie follows a great story of an insignificant little worker ant knows as 'Z' who is brilliantly portrayed by Woody Allen, who falls in love with the lovely and snobby prinses Bala (Sharon Stone)
Z's only chance to see prinses Bala again is to replace his best Friend Weaver's (Sylvester Stallone) place in a royal review of the ant army. The only problem is that the psychotic General Mandible(Gene Hackman) at that exact moment decides to send the army, including Z into battle against a colony of fierce Termites. Z, by accident ofcourse, is the only surviver and after being introduced to the queen he is discovered to be a worker impersonating a soldier, one of the worst crimes imaginable in the colony. Z escapes by 'kidnapping' Prinsess Bala' and they end up in some of the most amazing situations ever depicted on screen.
The film features a great cast for the leading roles but also some great actors for some of the minor roles, like Dan Akroyd as Chip and many others.

The film sets a great atmosphere and is really able to capture the complexity and sheer scale of the ant world in a great way, to achieve this the camera was kept at the ants' level as much as possible.

The Disc

Antz is not only a great movie in it's own right but also a great DVD to show off what your system can really do. Even though it's not a direct digital to digital transfer like A Bug's Life, the picture is crystel clear with great colour and deep blacks, free from any image artifacts.
The sound is also great and with a great musical score and some great effects, especially noticable in the 'shoe flyby' scene.
Not only is it a great transfer, this disc is also filled to the brim with extras, it contains everything you could want. All the Theatrical and TV trailers, a great featurette, a couple of cool documentaries about the process of creating a complex animated film like this, some very cool character design sketches and a full length Audio commentary from directors Tim Johnson and Eric Darnell, in which you can really tell what a passion these two have for the film, and it's very informative as well.

So in short, Antz is definitly one of the greatest DVD's available and should be in everyone's collection, Dreamworks have really done their best on this one and it shows. A well deserved Retina scan Gold award.

Antz by Dreamworks Disc : Single sided, dual layer Playing time : Approx 1 hour, 23 minutes Picture : 1.85:1 Anamorphic widescreen Languages : English Dolby Digital 5.1 Captions : English, Engish for the hearing impaired Extras : Feature length commentary, Production featurette, Basics of computer animation, Antz facial system, Antz charecter design, Production notes, Cast and Director bios, Antz trailers.

GOLD AWARD