BEE MOVIE

Director(s): Steve Hickner (Prince of Egypt), Simon J Smith
Starring: voices of Jerry Seinfeld, Renee Zellwegger, Matthew Broderick

There is an endearing corniness to Bee Movie that grows on you. For the first few scenes I sat in my seat stoically through a series of silly puns and groaners, a little scared that there might be 90 minutes more of the same. After an hour I was smiling at each one-liner. By the end of the film, I was laughing out loud (okay, only a time or two did I actually chuckle out loud). Yes, the jokes in this film seem like the kind of thing your wacky uncle would come up with, rather than the king of droll Jerry Seinfeld. Somehow, though, it all works. The silly jokes, the corny humor, and the wackiness really grew on me. It's a cute little film, and recommended.

Bee Movie, I have heard, began it's life with its pun of a title. The story that was woven around that title is ... decent. It's certainly not a great story, but neither can I find much fault. It seems a tad thin for the big screen, but who am I to argue. The plot here follows a bee named Barry (Seinfeld) who decides he doesn't want to join the worker society of his beeish world. That's "beeish", which is similar to "Jewish", which led to one of my more favorite jokes of the film where bee Seinfeld and a bee friend (Broderick) offhandly discuss how his family would disown him if he ever married a wasp. Corny, but still funny.

Barry the bee is destined to work in the honey factory - THE industry of the hive - just like most every other bee in his world. Of course being a cartoon, the honey factory is a gigantic Rube Goldberg production line. Barry decides he doesn't want to do that though. Just like that. Barry decides he wants to fly out of the hive with the pollen collectors. Once out in the world Barry meets a woman (Zellwegger), and sues the human honey industry (on the grounds that they are stealing from the bees). I'll stop there to save you the pain of my simply repeating the plot point by point ...

... except to say that most surprising of all, this court case wasn't the big finish. Nope, there's quite a bit more. The little lesson from this film is that the system isn't all bad. It's not perfect by any means, but it does a lot of good too. You see, Barry finds out that there are unexpected consequences to winning his court case. The bees become lazy and no longer collect pollen, since they can now live lives of ease on their court verdict "winnings". Without bees pollinating the flowers, the flowers stop reproducing - a serious problem indeed. Of course the problem get solved in the end.

This was a light film, and utterly lacking in cynicism (which couldn't have made me any happier). If you're a cynic you might find the film too corny for consumption. If not, I recommend it for what it is: A cute kids movie, with a slightly different twist. Not great, but definitely not bad.

Standouts: Cute (enough) story, occasionally funny (albeit uber-corny).
Blowouts: A lot of the characters were just bland. Somehow the film got around this rather big complaint, though.

Grade: B