Story is wrapped around a worker ant named Z and well voiced by Woody Allen. If you wanna neurotic to play a neurotic, who you gonna call? (Antz opens with Z on the psychoanalyst's couch yammering away.) He's tired of the same old schtick and basically wants to bust out of his confines. Sharon Stone is the babe ant (the princess--natch) who gets dragged into his odyessey and is none too glad to be there. Sylvester Stallone is Allen's soldier ant bud who has aspirations (believe it or not) to be a worker ant. Gene Hackman is the Machivellian General Mandible while Christopher Walken is his oleaginous second-in-command. Story has Hackman scheming to do a clean-sweep of the colony and start anew. Allen is hot for Stone's Princess babe character (duh!) and is off to save the day. Good enough.

The sheer stupefying amount of detail rendered to many shots is un-friggin'-believable. Z walks thru the colony and I swear, there are thousands of ants and each one is doing an individual task. It is not a simple copy and paste job--there is enormous variety of the ants' looks. The effect is not unlike the Chinese terra-cotta warrior statues. Believe you me, the Antz design is a show-stopper. The movie is light-years beyond Toy Story.

Thanks to dialogue an adult would appreciate more than a child, a parent will get just as big of a bang out of this flick as the youngster. Maybe even more. So run, don't walk to the nearest showcase for a real movie experience.

Movie's suitability for:

• Action Jackson: 50%
• Joe Fratboy (date movie): 60%
• Cinephile (pretentious movie lover): 60%
• animation fans: 80%
• all around movie-goer: 80%