Freeview film of the day: Antz

Antz ★★★★ 3.15-4.55pm Film Four

You wait all your life for a computer animated feature film about insects and two come along at once. In October 1998, DreamWorks released Antz, and, owing to parallel development over a number of years that caused a great deal of ire and recrimination at the time, Pixar followed in November with A Bug’s Life. The latter was a much sweeter affair and triumphed at the box office, but Antz is a different proposition. With a higher-profile voice cast that includes Woody Allen, Gene Hackman and Sharon Stone, it’s semi-serious, with a militaristic, almost Communistic theme and a narrative thread about individualism against hive mentality. More grown up, it looks amazing, too, and uses Allen’s neurotic persona to great comic effect.