Antz is a movie about little creatures, and it's presumably entertainment for little kids, but I think it's big kids who will enjoy it the most.

Cinema has been in existence for 100 years now. And for a century, no one thought of making a computer generated movie about insects. Then in the space of a month -- whammo -- we get two movies about computer generated bugs! A Bug's Life will soon follow, but Antz is the first one out of the gate and it'll be hard to top.

Woody Allen provides the voice of a worker ant named "Z" and the joke is -- he's Woody Allen as an ant! When we first meet "Z," he's in therapy, trying to explain the source of his neurosis: His father left when he was just a larvae, he's the middle child in a family of five million. But moreover, he's dissatisfied with his life as a drone. The ant colony here is portrayed as a highly ordered, totalitarian society. "Z" yearns to break free. He wants to get "in touch with his inner maggot."

Before long, "Z" has run off with the colony's beautiful princess (voiced by Sharon Stone) and sets out to seek the promised land of "Insectopia." In doing so, "Z" plants the seeds for a revolution. Meanwhile, the colony's evil dictator (Gene Hackman) is plotting to carry out his own brand of ethnic cleansing. Will kids understand any of this? It's doubtful, but who cares? They'll probably think the bugs are cute, and who says animated movies are just for children, anyway? Speaking of the little ones, parents may find the film's battle sequences a little too violent (the attack by some big Termites will remind you a lot of Starship Troopers.)

Adults will have fun picking out the all-star voices in the cast. In what other movie would you see Woody Allen play a scene with Sylvester Stallone? (Okay, besides Bananas?) Stallone, in fact, gives his best performance in decades. That's probably because the computer generated ant he plays is able to give more lifelike facial expressions than the real Stallone ever could. Now that's a special effect. Antz' CGI work is startlingly good. The real world environments the characters explore are more photo realistic than those in competing company Pixar's ground breaking Toy Story. The ants' ride on the bottom of a sneaker is thrilling.

But the movie's strength is its smart script. Kids won't get the film as a sociopolitical parable. But they'll appreciate it when they see it again as adults.

Copyright 1998