Dirs. Steve Hickner & Simon J. Smith, USA, 90mins, 2007
Cast: Jerry Seinfeld, Renee Zellweger, Matthew Broderick, John Goodman, Chris Rock
Review by Matthew Rodgers If the Jerry Seinfeld of the nine-season-running, multi-award-winning, genre changing, criminally ignored on these shores Jerry Seinfeld was to review Bee Movie it may sound something like this – “Enough already with the bugs!! We’ve had ants, caterpillars, Antz with a “Z”! They're not that interesting and they only live a matter of days, so how come they seem to have time to make at least two movies a year?” – But, of course, much funnier.
Bee Movie welcomes back one of contemporary comedy’s greatest influences to voice graduating bee Barry B. Benson and his oft-told tale of “the little guy that could”. After completing Bee College, which amusingly takes about a week, Barry decides that becoming a mindless drone might not be the life for him, so decides to explore the world outside the hive.
A lot of the buzz about Bee Movie is focused purely on the talents of Seinfeld. The pre-release trailers featured hilarious live-action footage that culminated in Steven Spielberg telling Jerry that it would be better off as a cartoon, if that was the case then whatever has happened in the translation to pixels has lost its sting, because this is bereft of originality and survives purely on the sardonic wit of its star.
PIXAR has set a standard in CGI that appears to have levelled out to a point at which any studio can churn out an aesthetically pleasing, half hearted effort that could have succeeded a few years ago on looks alone. Audiences are now becoming more demanding, hence the relative failure of Ant Bully, Surf’s Up and Disney’s Meet The Robinsons, so it’s a surprise that whilst Bee Movie looks polished, particularly the impressive anthropomorphism of the little stinger's characteristics and environment, it's still visually rather uninspired.
When it soars it unquestionably succeeds, such as the in-flight sequences, Barry’s bemusement at the concept of a window, and Chris Rock’s hilarious cameo as the Mosquito, Mooseblood. The problems are in the sometimes lazy writing and the constant attempts to shoehorn “bee” puns into the script, pot calling kettle you might say but remember that this is written by the creator of Seinfeld, so you expect better. Bee minus.
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