Review: Bee Movie

I can only review about 2/3 of Bee Movie, because by the time we got that far, my seven year old had seen enough and was done with this film and ready to go home. And to be honest, I made no effort what-so-ever to try and persuade her to stay.

I saw no point in torturing her any longer with this. I usually worry and warn that I will not give away a plot to a movie so as to inform and tell you what I thought without ruining the storyline for those that wish to see it. However, in the case of Bee Movie, I couldn’t give you the complete storyline if I wanted to. Why? Because I am not sure there was one.

The movie appears at times to be anti-corporate establishment (not wanting to work until you die doing the same job for the rest of your life), at another point it appears to be a warning about the environment, and yet at others seems to pull on the “allow me to be different” (such as in Happy Feet). But none of these seem to pan out to be the theme of the film. It doesn’t seem to have one at all.

The first 15 minutes is the most engaging stretch in the film. Like many in the genre, you get a view of the inner workings of a Bee’s life, from the perspective of the Bee, which casts a new light or at least allows the viewer to see common events in a new perspective. You get a lot of Bee (and “B”) humor, which culminates with Barry B. Benson (Jerry Seinfeld) flying out of the hive with the “Pollen Jocks” and getting to see the world outside of the hive. From there, it is a string of sight gags and Bee jokes loosely strung together with the aforementioned seemingly multi-themed (or non-themed) storyline that utterly fails to pull it all together.

It is quite a shame. They pulled together an all-star cast, and most put out exceptional performances (which the one glaringly bad John Goodman doing a seemingly cartoonish play on a cartoon of a character as the human defense attorney, although I am not entirely sure if the blame here goes to Goodman or to the director that wanted that type of performance out of him). The cast, which includes Renée Zellweger, Patrick Warburton, Matthew Broderick as well as Seinfeld are good enough that they will keep you watching this longer than you would without their talents, still ultimately fail to cover the fact that the script just isn’t a complete work.

Bee Movie had potential, but ultimately does not deliver.  It will go down with other animated disasters like Robots as the “B” movies of the genre.  Might be worth a rainy afternoon DVD or On Demand viewing, but that would be about all.  Definitely not something destined for most people’s (hey every film has its fans) video cabinet.