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In the future, whenever I get into a discussion about dazzling technical exercises that are nevertheless hollow aesthetic experiences, Antz, the first animated feature from the Disney wannabees at Dreamworks SKG, will figure prominently in the discussion. It is dazzling. It does things with computer animation that are jaw dropping, but ultimately unnecessary.

It tells the story of an ant (voiced by Woody Allen) who is dissatisfied with his lot as an insignificant part of a whole colony. In asserting his individuality, he romances the princess of the colony, goes off to war against termites, and saves the colony from the machinations of an evil general of soldier ants. In other hands, this might have worked splendidly. But Antz has two crippling problems:

The first problem is that it doesn't know who its target audience is. It is too sophisticated for children and too simple for adults. It clumsily tries to satisfy both audiences and demonstrates feet of clay in the process. The big name voices it brings in to appease the adult audience are a distraction and the movie teeters perilously on the brink of becoming an elaborate trivia game (what other movie co-starred Allen and Sly Stallone? being a prime example). It is not an effortless fantasy.

The second problem is a major part of the first problem in addition to the unrelated problems it brings to bear, and it's a doozie. This is the decision to closely match realistic human faces to the ants. This is accomplished with considerable technical virtuosity but it is a grave miscalculation stemming from a misunderstanding of how animation and anthropomorphism actually work. The "cartoony" appearance of cartoon characters is not a capitulation to the technical limitations of the form (and if you don't believe this, take a look at The Blue Fairy in Pinocchio compared with, say, Geppetto). The "cartoony" appearance is a window for the audience into the world of animation. It reduces the character's appearance to the level of an icon and it enables the cartoon to not only objectify things with realistic backgrounds and differing levels of realism in the main figures, it permits the audience to perceive an identification with the characters unhindered by what they look like. This is called the "masking" effect and it is particularly effective when "cartoony" characters are placed in realistic backgrounds (the model for this is, once again, Pinocchio). The makers of Antz have no understanding of this and have used technical virtuosity for its own sake at the expense of the movie. It isn't really possible to connect with the characters, but worse, it is difficult to divorce them from their voices and it is not possible to believe that these weird human faces are the faces of insects. The movie unravels from there.