Cute! Cute! Cute! Such cuteness shouldn’t be allowed in a film. I generally hate to use the word "cute" for fear of what it implies, but what other word can you use when talking about a wee little telescope made from a rolled-up blade of grass with a drop of water for the lens, a meditating praying mantis, and a flea circus made from bits of trash and detritus and which is driven by centipedes?

In case you haven’t guessed already, I loved A BUG’S LIFE, the latest venture from Pixar, the studio that brought you TOY STORY. It almost made me wish I had kids so I could take them to see it. The comparisons to ANTZ are inevitable, but for the purposes of this review, I’ll try to refrain from comparing these two feature-length animated features about bugs, because both stand on their own as wonderful, very different films.

A BUG’S LIFE is definitely more kiddy-friendly than ANTZ (oops), but it’s still bound to appeal to adults; I giggled from beginning to end. All aspects of the film, from the story to the lighting, camera work, and animation, are superb. The story is simple and engaging. Flik (as voiced by "News Radio"’s Dave Foley) is an independent ant; he wants to leave his colony and find like-minded tough bugs on the outside who can help him fight the evil (and downright ugly) team of grasshoppers who regularly invade the ant colony and steal their food. The grasshoppers have a menacing leader who goes by the appropriate moniker of Hopper (voiced by the ever-talented Kevin Spacey). For Hopper, might equals right, and even though he’s a bug, he’s mean as a snake.

When Flik leaves his "island" (which is actually a dirt mound in a dry creek bed), he tries his best not to act like a "country ant" so that he can blend in with the outside world (cute, no?). The treatment of the outside world is cleverly handled: Flik encounters a pile of trash which the animators modeled after Times Square. He is as awed as any tourist visiting the Big Apple for the first time.

There he meets a traveling troupe of flea circus performers which includes Heimlich (Joe Ranft), an overweight caterpillar with a German accent (no word on where the accent comes from, but man, is it funny); Francis (the inimitable and perfectly cast Denis Leary), a decidedly macho ladybug who constantly suffers the indignity of having others assume he’s a female; Slim, a walking stick voiced by David Hyde Pierce (and no doubt inspired by his on-air personality on "Frasier"). Rounding out the troupe is a whole assortment of performing bugs, perhaps the funniest of which is a pair of pill bugs named Tuck and Roll. These two (both voiced by Michael McShane) are constantly doing gymnastics and speaking in some made-up, Eastern European-sounding language, and they made me laugh so hard that I was nearly crying. I can’t wait to buy the action figures.

Other actors turning in great performances here are Julia-Louis Dreyfuss as ant-leader Princess Atta and the legendary Phyllis Diller as Atta’s mother, the queen ant; various other bugs are voiced by Madeline Kahn, Bonnie Hunt, John Ratzenberger, Jonathan Harris, and Roddy McDowall.

I don’t even want to say anything bad about A BUG’S LIFE, because it’s so rare that such a good film is made, but I have to earn my title and share one teeny-weeny complaint: Randy Newman’s overdone score. It never lets up. But I have to qualify that itty-bitty criticism by saying that I think it’s probably par for the course for a kiddy flick. Ninety minutes is a long time for a little one to sit in one place. So I guess I just canceled out my criticism.

Be sure to stay for the closing credits, which include "out-takes" from the movie showing supposed goofs and blunders from the bug actors. To sum up A BUG’S LIFE in one word: clever. I highly recommend it as a treat for the whole family, a perfect follow-up to an afternoon of gorging yourself on turkey and pecan pie.