Bee Movie offers a mixed bag of kids animation, both in terms of its look and plotting. It has some great sight gags, funny zingers, and a few decent ideas, but it’s undercooked. It feels like a nice concept, but it can be creepy and the ending doesn’t make much sense either.
Jerry Seinfeld voices Barry B. Benson, a soon-to-be worker bee who longs for a better life. As such, he ventures out of the hive and attempts to interact with humans, for better of worse. The film pulls its concept from the likes of Bug’s Life, Ant Bully, and vaguely, Antz. It feels like audiences have been taken into the world of cute, digitally animated insects a few times too many.
For much of the first half hour or, Bee Movie feels like it’s in a creative void. We’re introduced to the main characters, the hive process, and general bee life. It’s not particularly funny or entertaining. The look, with a few basic colors, is drab as well. As Barry takes to the skies in an effort to see the outside world, things pick up. Color creeps into the picture, and the plot can finally pick up some steam.
It’s creepy that a woman who saves Barry’s life suddenly becomes attached to him, Seinfeld or not. There are few points where the script honestly attempts to make them a couple, which for a countless number of reasons, goes against everything nature intended (and the physics wouldn’t work out either).
The human world quickly adjusts to the fact that insects can talk, and Barry files a lawsuit against the human race for stealing honey. This is where the film begins to pick up, with a hilarious conversation between Barry and Bee Larry King. Ray Liotta has a funny cameo, and the entire judicial process, for all of its absurdities, is well done.
Unfortunately, the resolution for all of this doesn’t make much sense. The bees fought to not have to work so hard to make honey, yet in the end, they do it anyway. Things go right back as they were, which is not only a cop-out, it feels like this entire movie was a waste of time. The bees don’t gain anything, the human still get their honey, and the world lives happily ever after (and the human/bee relationship continues, apparently). Why did we have to sit through all of that to get nowhere again?
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