Film review: Bee Movie

Bee Movie @ IMDB

You can see why the big name Actors and what not have been crawling over themselves to do voices for animated films. It's a few weeks work, keeps the kids happy and if you can get a slice of the merchandising pretty lucrative.

You don't get many creating their own animated CG kids film, which is what we have here from Jerry Seinfeld.

Seinfeld, of course, was the star of his eponymous sitcom. This was a huge success blah blah blah and after it finished he could have done anything. And he did this.

What we have is the tale of a Bee suing the human race for stealing honey from all the bees. How quirky.

Is it in the watered down style of a Seinfeld episode? Yes. It's not quite a film about nothing but the influences on the style of the film are obvious. It looks great, as most animated CG films do these days.

The problem, really, is Seinfeld.

Whilst you do get some nice jokes* I'm not sure if most of it is pitched at the right audience. It's also not as engaging as other kids films, the characters all have the same kind of smug tone to their dialogue that comes off as annoying.

The worst culprit is Seinfeld as you can't take anything he says seriously. He's supposed to be the emotional centre of the film. But he hasn't the range to really make you believe in his character, he's essentially the sitcom character dressed as a bee. The jokes don't flow either, everything seems self conscious.

Perhaps I'm being harsh.

Whilst not the greatest story ever, it is better than most kids films. It doesn't take any risks like Surf's Up but it does the job that it's trying to do.

In a word? Smug.




* Generally in animated CG kids films there is always a rollercoaster type sequence. This is the main character flying through some ludicrously complex series of roads or waterways or whatever. There's one in Surf's Up, Happy Feet, Robots, Ice Age, even Finding Nemo. And also Bee Movie. But when you get to the end of the sequence in Bee Movie one of the characters says something like "Isn't it great they combined our roads with the amusement parks" which was a great little reference.