Bugs Never Looked So Good

‘A Bug’s Life” is the best thing to happen to insects since rotting garbage.

The second computer-animated bug movie to hit theaters this fall, “A Bug’s Life” is a much better-looking film than “Antz” and, if it’s not quite as funny as the earlier film, it still has plenty of kid-friendly, Borscht Belt-style jokes (“It’s a bug-eat-bug world out there”). There’s even some brainier, surreal humor (fly: “Hey, waiter. I’m in my soup”), directed at the species that has lived on Earth for 100 million years but has only recently received stretch limo/ publicist/two-picture-deal attention from Hollywood.

“A Bug’s Life” has a more varied look than “Antz,” mainly because the new movie uses lots of different kinds of bugs instead of only seen-one-seen-‘em-all ants. Our hero is a mechanically minded arthropod named Fleck (voice of Dave Foley) who’s trying to impress the ant princess (Julia Louis-Dreyfus), but who gets in trouble when he inadvertently botches the ants’ annual mission to gather enough food to keep themselves and their nasty grasshopper neighbors fed for the year.

The liveliest characters are the other bugs Fleck enlists to help dig the ants out of their jam - including Denis Leary as a ladybug (an idea that’s automatically funny) and Bonnie Hunt as a genial black widow - as well as the villain of the piece. He’s Hopper, a grass-kicking grasshopper, and Kevin Spacey’s menacing intelligence gives him the evil majesty of a Shakespearean villain.

It’s a shame the nice bugs don’t have as much personality as the baddies. Unlike “Toy Story,” which was created by the same team as “A Bug’s Life,” the new movie doesn’t have easy-to-relate-to protagonists. There isn’t as much heart, possibly because “Toy Story” fleshed out a bunch of characters that were already familiar to us (Mr. Potato Head, Slinky), whereas “A Bug’s Life” has about a dozen leading characters, and it has to start from scratch on all of them.

But, when in doubt, the movie just cuts to another breathtaking image. It’s particularly good at capturing the yellow beauty of early-morning light, plus there’s a gorgeous shot of a dandelion going to seed, and the features of the bugs are remarkably expressive. And be sure and stick around for the surprising closing credits - “A Bug’s Life” saves its best moments for last.

“A Bug’s Life” Location: East Sprague, Lincoln Heights, Newport, Coeur d’Alene Credits: Directed by John Lasseter and Andrew Stanton; starring the voices of Dave Foley, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, David Hyde Pierce, Kevin Spacey Running time: 1:26 Rating: G