BEE MOVIE

Written by Fumo Verde

So I had my two little nephews over for Thanksgiving Weekend and decided to take them to see Bee Movie, figuring it would be funny and I love Jerry Seinfeld, so why not, right? So after dropping a wad of cash to get in and get my boys their snacks, I sat down ready to enjoy a little light comedy. Be-lieve me when I say I should have saved the money and taken the boys to the arcade room. The kids liked the flick; as for me not so much. Don’t get me wrong, I love animated movies, especially now since they’re all done in CGI. It’s just with all the comedy power packed into this film, I was expecting more.

The cast includes Seinfeld who plays Barry B. Benson, a recent graduate who has no intention of doing just one job for the rest of his life. He decides to go outside the hive where he meets Renee Zellweger’s character Vanessa. Bee law prohibits Barry from speaking to humans, but Vanessa saved him so he had to say something. You could say that he and Vanessa start dating.

When she takes him to the supermarket, Barry flips out when he sees honey in jars and on the shelves for humans to buy. He sues the honey manufactures, not for money, but to stop them from making honey. The bees win the lawsuit and get all the supermarket honey turned over to them. With the bees not having to work since they now have so much honey, they don’t pollinate anything anymore, causing the flowers and fruits to fade away. Vanessa, being a florist, has to leave NYC to go to Pasadena to see the last Rose Parade ever. When Barry asks her why, she shows him how the planet is changing without the bees to pollinate the flora. With a little bee ingenuity Barry and his hive save the world and put the bees back to work.

This one’s decent for the kids. It holds their attention and the story is cute but for the adults in the seats next to them, there’s not much entertainment. One of the funniest scenes comes with Chris Rock as a mosquito. Life on the windshield would have been a better one for adults. Other stars include John Goodman, Eddie Izzard, Matthew Broderick, and Oprah Winfrey, who all do a fine job and help the story move along. Seinfeld is fantastic and you can picture him in a bee-suit doing some of this shtick on HBO or something. He had some funny lines.

DreamWorks Animation deserves maximum respect for the magic they pulled off here. I would rent it on DVD before loosening the purse strings, though. The little ones will dig it with all its colors and motion. I asked my nephews if they liked it they said “yes.” I give credit to Jerry Seinfeld for doing this because it did keep the ankle biters occupied and they were excited to see it; I just wish there was a little more adult “funny” in it.