Barry B. Benson (Jerry Seinfeld) doesn’t want to do the same thing for the rest of his life. A worker bee living in New Hive City, he’s not at all excited about the prospect doing the same tedious thing day after day after day at Honex producing honey. Instead, he wants variety and adventure, and while best friend Adam Flayman (Matthew Broderick) and parents Janet (Kathy Bates) and Martha (Barry Levinson) don’t remotely understand this is what Barry feels and by golly he’s going to do something about it. 

Barry B. Benson (Jerry Seinfeld) discovers the world outside the honeycomb in Dreamworks Pictures' Bee Movie

Next thing you know, this laidback insect has broken Bee Law and started communicating with human beings, making friends with the lovely florist Vanessa Bloom (Renée Zellweger) after she saves him from a brutal boot squashing. All is perfect until he discovers the human race is selling the bee’s honey and keeping many others of his kind prisoner to manufacture the sweet stuff for them. Outraged, Barry decides to sue humanity and avenge this injustice, the consequences of which having a far greater impact upon the planet then either insect or human could ever have imagined.

The new computer animated comedy Bee Movie is one of those films I wanted to like a lot more then I actually did. It isn’t that there is really all that much wrong with the picture, the problem is there just isn’t a heck lot about it that’s right, either. This movie literally just sits there going from scene to scene with a lackadaisical whimsy that, after a while, becomes a bit tedious. And while I did laugh I didn’t do it very often, most of my 90 or so minutes in the theater spent looking at the screen benignly wondering when anything of interest was ever going to occur.

The main problem here is that creator Seinfeld (working with three other writers) and directors Simon J. Smith and Steve Hickner never create a fully believable world viewers can immerse themselves within. The rules of it keep shifting and changing almost at whim, and at no time during the film did I ever feel that any of the things taking place onscreen could actually be happening.

Don’t take that to mean I’m not above a little bit of fantasy or suspending my disbelief. Quite the contrary, but whereas a film like Pixar’s Ratatouille or Aardman’s Chicken Run are able to develop an inherent logic making their more fantastical moments giddily plausible Seinfeld and company never do the same. It’s almost like they’re making it all up as they go along letting the pieces fall where they may, in the end believing all they need is their star’s down-to-earth charm to bring about success.

And he is charming, and so is Zellweger. Heck, the entire cast all have their moments of loony irreverence (I especially loved the cameos by both Sting and a hyperkinetic Ray Liotta), just not near enough of them to make watching it worthwhile. I didn’t care about the characters, didn’t feel for their plight and didn’t want to know how they were going to ultimately succeed. If anything I was bored, and while the animation was certainly pretty to look at and a joke here or there caused me to giggle overall I could have left after the first ten minutes and not felt a bit bad. 

On the plus side, little children (we’re talking four or five-year-olds) are going to eat Bee Movie up like graham crackers covered in honey. Better, other then a brief smoking reference and one way above their heads sexual innuendo there isn’t a single thing here which could remotely be construed as offensive or inappropriate. If a babysitter is what you are looking for you could do a lot worse. Not exactly what I would call a recommendation but, hey, I guess when you’re film is as forgettable as this one you’ll take all the good news you can get.

Film Rating: êê  (out of 4)

Additional Links:

-  Interview with Jerry Sienfeld by Sara Michelle Fetters
-  Bee Movie Theatrical Trailer