|
Traditionally, busy bees are happy bees. That may be true most of the time,
but for Barry (Jerry Seinfeld), he needs some time to think about that
one. After graduating, Barry wants to take a few days off before selecting
the job that he’ll have for the rest of his life. His parents and his pal
Adam (Matthew Broderick) don’t understand, but Barry wants to venture outside
the hive. He takes off with the pollen jocks on a gathering mission and
gets caught out in a rainstorm and meets a human, Vanessa (Renée
Zellweger). She’s cute, she’s kind, she saves Barry’s life... he’s transformed
into a love bug.
While Barry’s out cross-species dating, he learns some awful truths about the world, like the fact that people are keeping bees trapped in fake hives to make honey for their own consumption (the nerve of us people). Barry decides to sue the human race on behalf of all bees. He doesn’t think about what would happen if he actually wins the lawsuit (bees are not known for being great analytical thinkers).
If you bought into all the buzz flying around about this movie (you couldn’t
turn on the TV without seeing the ads), you’d be expecting the be-all animated
film of the year, but honey, the truth isn’t so sweet. The premise is thin,
which could be overcome if the insect jokes were funnier. Even ideas that
seem amusing (like the bug gathering on the windshield), aren’t as funny
in the execution.
There are some chuckle moments with Ray Liotta and a mosquito named Mooseblood (Chris Rock) and the animation in the hive is bright and colorful (especially if you’re into yellow and black), but there aren’t enough scenes that really make you laugh. Plus, the story is never compelling enough to draw you in to the world of bees.
The other issue is with the humans in the film – it’s almost as if they try to make up for being bigger by overdoing all their lines, or worse, trying to match Jerry Seinfeld’s delivery cadence (which doesn’t even work as well for Jerry when he’s dressed up as a bee). Oprah, Sting, John Goodman, Patrick Warburton, and even Larry King are wasted because they get no good lines to say. We wanted to like this, but we think you probably have to be little to really enjoy this bee movie – the best we could do was a C-.
Home
|
