Bee Movie Review

Mostly I was just glad not to have to sit through those annoying "Bee Movie TV Juniors."

If you watch pretty much any show on NBC, you know what I'm talking about and you were probably irritated by the relentless promotion for this movie (which was especially disappointing after a clever, live-action early teaser).

Anyway, "Bee Movie" finally came out, and, while it won't be joining the pantheon of great animated movies, it was cute.

Jerry Seinfeld stars as Barry B. Benson, a worker bee just graduating from bee college and about to start his job at the beehive, though he's not nearly as enthusiastic as his friend Adam (Matthew Broderick). Like most main characters in animated movies, Barry is unwilling to settle for the redundant existence waiting for him and dreams of venturing out of the hive.

I don't think it's a major spoiler to say he does, eventually meeting an impossibly friendly human florist (Renee Zellwegger) named Vanessa Bloome.

To me, the movie started out a little slowly, though the movie DID have plenty of clever sight gags related to the bee's lives. However, once Barry meets Vanessa and finds out humans have been "stealing" the bee's honey and making money off of their hard work, things really get going.

Personally, I wasn't ready for how relentlessly silly the movie was going to be. The movie's version of the world was amusing to me in how everyone was surprisingly okay with interacting with a bee. On the other hand, the lightly implied chaste romance between Barry and Vanessa was a little too weird, even for me.

Most of the vocal performances were strong. Obviously, Seinfeld gets most of the screen time and he's a likable presence most of the time. Sometimes though, his whiny Seinfeldian rants got irritating in a way they never did on his sitcom because he had bigger personalities like George, Elaine and Kramer (Michael Richards makes a voice cameo, pre-racist rant I'm assuming) to bounce off of. Also, sometimes it would seem like the movie would stop, and we'd be watching a classic Seinfeld "bit".

Pretty much everyone else was rock solid. Zellwegger made for the perfect, likeable female lead, Seinfeld-favorite Patrick Warburton was great (as usual) as Vanessa's psychotic boyfriend, and Chris Rock made the most of his screen time as a mosquito. Also, Sting and Ray Liotta drop in as themselves in pretty funny bits. (The hilarious Liotta bit was actually my favorite part.)

I also liked that, although the movie extols the virtues of individual choice, it also makes the point that sometimes people (or bees) have a job (no matter how unglamorous) that just needs to be done.

Bee Movie...Bee, I mean, B (sorry, couldn't resist).