Animated Manhattan: Antz
Part 2 in an ongoing series looking at New York City in animation.
This time, we look at Antz, the computer-animated Dreamworks film about an ant named Z-4165 (called simply “Z” by the other characters) voiced by Woody Allen. Typical of Woody Allen characters, Z is depressed, in therapy, and feels pretty insignificant. This isn’t surprising, considering he’s one in a billion ants living together in a giant ant colony. It’s easy to get lost in the crowd.
The film starts out reminiscent of Woody Allen’s movie “Manhattan,” with a big silhouetted view of the Manhattan skyline:
But a lighting change quickly reveals that we aren’t looking at Manhattan at all, but an extremely close-up view of some blades of grass:
The camera then pans down, through the ground, and we meet our character Z for the first time, talking with his therapist. This begins the story of how one little insignificant ant can rise up, find love, save his colony from destruction, and save the day becoming a big hero.
At the film’s conclusion, Z is surrounded by his new love, and his whole colony, in the aftermath of the great battle that ended the film.
The camera pulls back, showing the size of the crowd…
…and we see again how insignificantly small all those ants are…
…and that they’re even smaller compared to their anthill…
…which, it turns out, is in the middle of a park…
…with trees, grass, a water fountain, and garbage…
…it’s probably Central Park, by the looks of it…
…and finally the camera reveals that the story has been taking place in the middle of Manhattan, showing the skyline in all its glory.
While the movie wasn’t as good as many other cartoons, I loved the conclusion. I thought it was a great way to reinforce the notion that all those little ants are, after all, pretty insignificant compared to the scale of the big city. And living in Manhattan it’s easy to feel like an ant toiling away, and that Manhattan is one giant ant farm.
Of course, the final shot is an impossible depiction of the Manhattan skyline. Looking South from Central Park, the Plaza Hotel is in the right place, and both the Chrysler Building and Empire State Building are in approximately the right places, too. But the former AT&T Building (now called Sony Plaza) is rotated 90 degrees so we can see its Chippendale-style top. And the former Pan Am building (now called the MetLife building) has been transplanted to a front-and-center location where it doesn’t belong. And of course the World Trade Center is really so far downtown that it should not be looming so high above Central Park. But while the details are wrong, the overall feeling is right.
IMDb Rating: 6.9/10
BCDb Rating: 8/10
My Rating: 7.5/10
(My rating is for the film’s depiction of NYC only)
