Bee Movie Nearly Put Me To Zzzz
I don’t know exactly what to think of Bee Movie, but then again, I don’t think the movie knows either. Written by Jerry Seinfeld, animated by Dreamworks, the movie seems to have serious potential, but only minutes into the film, the flaws become clear.
This is the story of Barry B. Benson, who is a bee if you can’t tell by now and is voiced by Mr. Seinfeld. He’s just graduated Bee College and is about to be placed in his permanent job in the hive where he will stay forever. But Barry, like Benjamin Braddock before him, isn’t so sure that plastics…sorry, honey is in his future. But one day he takes up a dare laid down by a “pollen jock” and decides to leave the hive. His little day trip takes a detour when a tennis ball, a rainstorm and a leather boot puts him in the house of a young florist (Rene Zellweger). By the way, bees can really talk, but they don’t around humans. They spark a friendship that sometimes feels eerily like a relationship. But then Barry finds out that humans are selling honey. Outraged, he decides to sue to put a kibosh on this operation and decides to sue on behalf of all bees.
Throughout the entire feature, I found myself asking whom is this movie really trying to entertain? I knew it couldn’t be the kids when one little girl around five said what everyone else felt during the movie: “No Fun!!!” The problem with the story is that most of the jokes are in witticisms targeted more towards adults that there’s very little that kids will like. Yes, it’s pretty though a distant cousin to Ratatouille. I do appreciate some of the movie, such as a mosquito voiced by Chris Rock. I enjoyed how they made the link between bees and the environment that is told with urgency but without making any political statements. But that doesn’t excuse the meandering, the lack of true sophistication and well-conceived characters.
Dreamworks Animation has been on a rapid decline since the second Shrek film and this year has already given us the lackluster Shrek the Third. Why do they think they need to have so much pop-culture in their films? Why won’t they give up the ghost and try something different? I remember their first animated film with admiration, Antz. That was really the much-better retelling of what Bee Movie is going for. Not only does Bee Movie sport a dull story, but the animation is so incredibly lame that it makes me wonder how on earth did it cost $150 to make?
All in all, this movie is going to have families flocking to it no matter how much I tell them not to. Some kids will like it because it’s animated and won’t realize until too late that there’s better stuff out there. Although a little girl did encourage me to hope, and I wonder if I just heard the next great critic.