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RATING: PG GENRE: Family comedy RELEASE DATE: November 2, 2007 RUNNING TIME: 90 minutes |
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It's not the end-all, bee-all of animated comedies, but here's why Bee Movie gets at least a B
by Bill Wine
CRITIQUE:
The buzz on Jerry Seinfeld's bee-witching big-screen project is warranted: Your grandchildren will have a fine time at this animated laugh-fest, and so will you. Yadda yadda yadda.
To Bee or not to Bee. That is the animated question.
The answer becomes apparent as Bee Movie brings the black-and-yellow insect to center stage, just as Antz and A Bug's Life and Ratatouille and Happy Feet and Finding Nemo and their ilk have done for other species.
But the creator, co-writer, co-producer and lead performer of Bee Movie could have made a persuasive case for Seinfeld as an alternate title.
Because the comic sensibility and stamp of comedian Jerry Seinfeld — cerebral, observant, clever, whimsical, engaging — informs virtually every frame of this amiable animated attraction.
Oh, make no mistake, this is a grandchild's movie — rated PG for "mild suggestive humor and a brief depiction of smoking." But the writers pollinate the script with one-liners so that grandparents don't get disenfranchised, even if the variegated screenplay never quite allows the film to bee all that it can bee.
Seinfeld gives voice — and personality — to Barry B. Benson, a bee who has recently graduated from college.
Barry wonders if there's some meaningful way he can spend his life other than making honey, which everybody around him is involved in.
His best buddy, Adam Flayman (Matthew Broderick), for example, is happy with his lot in life and feels that Barry should bee too.
As do Barry's parents (Kathy Bates and Barry Levinson), who would like to see him become a worker at New Hive City, working for the Honex Corporation.
When he gets the opportunity to leave the hive, Barry takes it, flying out into the human world with the dashing, fearless "pollen jocks."
In New York City, he is saved from a quick death by a kind florist (Renee Zellweger).
He's so grateful, he breaks the bees' cardinal rule of never talking to humans even though they're able to.
An inter-species friendship is born.
But then, while accompanying his new human friend on a shopping trip, Barry discovers that among the items on supermarket store shelves are lots of jars of honey.
Yep, honey that Barry and his kind spend their lives making is on sale for (gulp) human consumption and profitability.
Immediately, he vows to right this wrong, to correct this obvious inequity by suing the human race for stealing the bees' precious honey.
Law school? Don't bee silly: We're in a cartoon universe.
Directors Steve Hickner and Simon J. Smith let the numerous wise and/or witty observational laughs register and make sure the flying action sequences are exhilarating.
But the emotional reservoir that turns the best animated adventures into beloved classics is on the shallow side.
Oh, there's plenty of narrative, but the script — by Seinfeld, Spike Feresten, Barry Marder and Andy Robin — is somewhat bee-twixt and bee-tween, compromising its internal logic, changing tone and bouncing around as if the screenwriters were desperately trying to smooth out the narrative wrinkles in an otherwise smooth story.
The everybody-who's-anybody party of a supporting voice cast also includes Chris Rock, John Goodman, Oprah Winfrey, Rip Torn, Megan Mullally, Patrick Warburton, Larry Miller, Michael Richards, Ray Liotta (who actually figures in the plot) and — of course — Sting.
They all seem to bee having a good time. As do we.
It's not the bee-all and end-all of animated comedies, but Bee Movie gets at least a B.
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