A Bug's Life is Pixar's second feature film, and is just a solid picture for the whole family. While it might not be their best, even the lower rung of Pixar's work far exceeds most production company's best films. Not only does A Bug's Life contain a great star-packed story, but the visuals broke many grounds like an abundance of transparency and fairly good looking fire and smoke effects. A Bug's Life deserves much praise, and seeing it on Blu-ray adds a lot to the film.

A Bug's Life follows a single ant in a colony of hundreds. While most are content with sticking to the standard daily grind and harvesting all of their food for the coming offering, Flik (Dave Foley of The Kids in the Hall and NewsRadio note), constantly invents new ways to be more productive. Unfortunately for Flik, most of his inventions end up doing more harm than good. This comes into play almost immediately, when his new tool causes all of the gathered grain to fall into the nearby pond just as a band of grasshoppers show up for their "offering."

This biker-like group of ruffians is led by Hopper (Kevin Spacey) and when he finds there is no food, he gives the ant colony one more chance before they are all squished. They have to gather double the food before the first frost of Winter, which is something the ant colony feels is impossible. When Flik comes up with the idea to hire some thug-bugs of their own in order to fight off the swarming menace, Princess Atta (Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Seinfeld) agrees with his plan and sends him out. Of course, she doesn't think he can actually succeed, instead she sees it as a chance to get him out of the way while everyone gets to gathering.

Meanwhile, a small band of circus bugs has been laid off because they just aren't drawing the crowd they used to. This band consists of a lady bug named Francis (Denis Leary), a walking stick named Slim (David Hyde Pierce, Frasier), Rosie (Bonnie Hunt), the black widow, the caterpillar Heimlich (Joe Ranft, who is actually a Pixar employee that just stood in for the voice of Heimlich, but everyone loved him), Gypsy Moth (Madeline Kahn) and her husband Manny (Jonathan Harris, whom most will remember as Dr. Smith from TV's Lost in Space). This group of circus bugs also contains a trio of bugs, one is the giant rhino-beetle named Dim (Brad Garrett) and a pair of pill bugs, Tuck and Roll (both voiced by Michael McShane). Well, when Flik happens upon this group in a bar and mistakes their heroic talk for actual abilities, he hires them to return to the colony and stop the grasshopper-gang. Of course, they think he is talking about a dinner-theater gig and not actual fighting.

Needless to say, when they all get back to the colony, both the circus bugs and Flik have a nasty realization. But Flik comes up with an idea and promises the circus bugs that they only have to pretend to be real fighters in order to train the rest of the colony and then sneak away before Hopper and his gang reappear. As you would imagine, before everything is set, the visiting bug's true identities are revealed and the colony realizes they have once again put all their trust into the screw-up Flik and feel that all hope is lost once again. But this is a Disney movie, so you know everything will turn out in the end.

What I found amazing about this film was that not only are there a lot of pretty big names in the main cast of characters, but A Bug's Life's supporting cast isn't anything to sneeze at either. The colony's Queen is played by Phyllis Diller, Hopper's side-kick brother is Richard Kind (from Spin City), John Ratzenberger of course makes his cameo in the circus ringleader P.T. Flea and even a very young Hayden Panettiere (Claire from Heroes) plays little Princess Dot. I really didn't realize the number of names that were attached to this film, and it just makes me appreciate it that much more.

This Blu-ray release also comes jam-packed with special features. Not only does it have everything that 2003's 2-Disc Collector's Edition had, but even some Blu-ray exclusives like a round table discussion with several of the film's creators about their experiences before and during the making of A Bug's Life. The other exclusive feature has Foley telling the plot of A Bug's Life's initial story over animated storyboards. It was really interesting to see how Pixar first envisioned the film, especially just after re-watching the actual movie and seeing where a lot of the original concepts stayed intact.

The other special features include all of the outtakes (which have become a staple of Pixar films), the short that preceded the movie in theaters, "Geri's Game," and tons of featurettes and documentaries on just about every aspect of the movie itself. I also enjoyed the classic Disney's Silly Symphony short "Grasshopper and the Ants" which clocked in around 10 minutes long.

Quite frankly, even if it wasn't for the vast amounts of special features, I would have said A Bug's Life on Blu-ray is a must buy (as with pretty much every Pixar film), but the inclusion of so many extras really makes this a no-brainer. While most releases will have a lot of special features, but aren't really that interesting, I found pretty much everything on this disc to be good. Plus, it comes with a digital copy for those of you who like to watch movies on your iPods. How can you turn this down?

---