>>REVIEW
BUGS! A RAINFOREST ADVENTURE
STARRING Papilio and Hierodula
DIRECTED BY Mike Slee
Opens Friday, September 23
Telus World of Science
It sounds like the recipe for a B-grade horror movie. A praying mantis is blown up to 250,000 times its natural size and goes hunting for food. But the magnification, in this case, is only visual, and the result is not Attack of the Giant Mantids but Bugs! A Rainforest Adventure, the latest super-sized feature playing at the Telus World of Science.
The film follows, at startlingly close range, the life cycles of two insects chosen especially for their dramatic potential. Papilio, a rather unimposing caterpillar, bulks up to 100 times her original size through constant munching before embarking on her remarkable metamorphosis into a butterfly. The other protagonist is Hierodula, the praying mantis, who should perhaps be called the preying mantis. A born hunter, he must kill at least once a day to survive. In the rainforest, as narrator Judi Dench dryly observes, "you’re on somebody’s menu from the moment you hatch." Watching Hierodula extend his spiked hunting legs slowly, almost imperceptibly, towards an unsuspecting fruit fly – a gesture indeed reminiscent of lifting one’s hands in prayer – is a surprisingly suspenseful experience. On the other hand, the sight of him chomping down, without so much as saying grace, on the oozing head of his still-twitching victim is unsurprisingly gross, yet also weirdly cool.
The high point of this mantis’s story is of course the seduction scene. Female mantises, you see, are sometimes known – in a gesture admired by some of my ex-girlfriends for its symbolism – to eat the heads of their lovers after mating with them. But Hierodula proves one smooth operator, and he escapes from this particular assignation with head intact. At least we are told he does – the camera pans prudishly away just as things start to get steamy.
This is, after all, a film for the entire family. Children, of course, who are less susceptible to being grossed out, will find this bug’s-eye view of the alien insect realm especially thrilling. But even delicate grown-ups such as myself, who squeal at the sight of anything travelling across their linoleum on more than four legs, should find the images strangely fascinating. Better up there on the screen, after all, than in my kitchen. |
Copyright ©2005 FFWD. All rights reserved.