Football Bugs: A weird, frantic afternoon with insects

Is it worth your time?

If you have a soft spot for the kind of animation where physics are just a suggestion and limbs stretch like rubber bands, then yes. You’ll probably hate this if you need a coherent story or if watching a cricket get flattened makes you feel weirdly sad.

Honestly, watching Football Bugs feels like someone had a fever dream about the sport and decided to animate the whole thing in a single sitting. The pacing is absolutely relentless. There is no downtime, just constant movement.

The insects are surprisingly aggressive. They tackle each other with a level of ferocity I usually only see in The Texas Bearcat, though with significantly more buzzing. One moment stands out: there is this one grasshopper who tries to hurdle a pile of dirt and just… evaporates into a puff of dust. 🦗

It’s not trying to be a deep commentary on sports culture. It just wants to see if a beetle can kick a ball made of spider silk. It works, for the most part.

Odd observations:

• The sound design is mostly just high-pitched whistling. It stays in your head for way too long.
• There is a background character—a fly—who just stands in the corner for the entire second act doing absolutely nothing. I found myself rooting for him.
• The colors are surprisingly bright, almost like they were trying to give me a migraine by the halfway mark.

Sometimes, the animation gets a little jittery, like the frames are fighting each other. It’s not necessarily bad, just charming in a way that feels very human. It reminds me of the scrappy energy you find in Top Flat, where the chaos feels earned.

Don’t look for logic here. If you start questioning the size of the football relative to the ants, you are already losing. Just let the nonsense wash over you.

It’s short, it’s loud, and it’s weirdly memorable. I’ve seen much longer movies that had half the personality of these bugs just running around in circles. 🏈