Word: antz
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...plays Barry, a bee who's restless to get out of his home base in New Hive City and see the world. (Like Antz, the first DreamWorks CGI feature, Bee Movie is set in Central Park.) His first outside flight lands him in the home of a friendly florist (voiced by Renée Zellweger) and, in the anything-goes premise, they find they can talk to each other. While Barry's parents fret that she's not right for him ("Is she bee-ish?"), he uncovers a plot to enslave his species and, like a good Jewish bee, acts...
Rather than Pixar's popping pastels or the warm browns favored by DreamWorks in Antz and Shrek, Robots goes for a color scheme that is cool, muted, instantly aged. Director Chris Wedge wants the eye to concentrate on the gags he and his writers (including veteran comedy craftsmen Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel) have stuffed into the film, like the glancing mention of a woman whose "dream is to end world rust." This will keep adults amused while the kids focus on Robot City's highway system, which is like a theme park designed by Rube Goldberg...
...dimensional kind with hand-made drawings and singing dwarfs and teapots. Even the most familiar looking of our new trio--Shark Tale, from the people responsible for the Shrek megahits--is in the computer-generated mode. Another DreamWorks cartoon that eerily resembles the work of its competitor Pixar (Antz to match A Bug's Life, Shrek to counter Monsters Inc.), this one goes underwater, as Pixar's Finding Nemo did, but with a more urban-contemporary tilt and much less craft and heart...
...Actors who partake in films like this or in animated films, like I did in Antz, often say, 'I did it for my children,'" notes Stallone, who's 57 but looks a fit and muscular 15 years younger. "Nah. You mean you did it for your inner child. Here I get to scream and act like a total fool and get paid for it. In a part like this, you really have to let loose and not worry that you hear the 'acting police' sirens looming in the background...
Maybe Verbinski's talent takes to water. Maybe he took inspiration from the cunning script by Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio; their credits include The Mask of Zorro and a lot of bright, clever animated hits (Aladdin, Antz, Shrek). But, honestly, who cares to parse the authorship? Buy a ticket, take a seat, have a ball...