William Joyce Movies

John Lasseter, director of Pixar's movie phenomenon Toy Story, has set new standards in computer animation with this effort, another Disney-released children's epic entitled A Bug's Life. Blending classic Disney storytelling characters and the mysterious underground world of bugs, Lasseter has created a film that can be enjoyed by all audiences, and another franchise in the process. A Bug's Life is a computerized retelling of the Aesop fable The Ant and the Grasshopper, made as a cartoon-short by the one-and-only, Walt Disney, in the mid-'30s. However, A Bug's Life has modernized the story with many new twists and celebrity voices. The story focuses on a colony of ants who seasonally gather food for themselves and a wild gang of rowdy grasshoppers. When bumbling worker ant Flik (David Foley) destroys the food supply, the angry grasshoppers, lead by the maniacally warped Hopper (Kevin Spacey), threaten to kill the ants if they don't produce a new supply of food by the time they return -- an impossible feat. Flik leaves the anthill in search of help in the form of bigger bugs, and to wage war against the grasshoppers. What he doesn't know is he has actually discovered a group of down-on-their-luck traveling circus insects in need of a job. When the ants realize that their heroes are really circus performers (and the circus bugs realize these grasshoppers are really big and mean), the situation goes from bad to worse. Ultimately, the ants use their large numbers to overcome the grasshoppers. ~ Chris Gore, Rovi

A lot of people like to say that their pets think they're human, but Trudy Lintz (Rene Russo) has taken this notion to a new level: she likes to treat her pets as if they were human. A wealthy New Yorker, Trudy has a menagerie of animals living in her apartment, including dogs, horses, ducks, and four chimpanzees whom she dresses in human clothing and treats as if they were her own children. Trudy's husband (Robbie Coltrane) is fully aware of his wife's eccentricities but has learned to live with them. However, this gets a bit more difficult when Trudy is persuaded to adopt Buddy, an infant gorilla. Buddy is a tiny creature in poor health when Trudy first meets him, but with love and care she nurses the gorilla back to health. However, the rejuvenated Buddy starts growing into adulthood, and while the chimps are small and docile enough to wear human clothing and obey Trudy's instructions, Buddy becomes a several-hundred-pound adult who hears the call of the wild too clearly to do what Trudy wants, which becomes painfully obvious during a trip to the World's Fair. Jim Henson's Creature Shop helped create the special-effects animals used in the film. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi