Beeware, this is no Toy Story
The first half of this movie is great. It was clever, funny, and original. The second half, while there were shining moments, fell short. Seinfeld was great, and his humor found its way through. Nearly all of the activity inside "the hive" was very entertaining. The problem with these types of movies is that it is becoming so easy to make them quickly. Movies like Toy Story and Monster's Inc. took years to make, which also gave them plenty of time to tweak and change the plot and script to make sure that it was perfect. Now that they take less time, and money, to make you end up with movies like this one (along with Madagascar, over the hedge, etc.) Yes, they are funny. However, in the end they don't quite measure up.

I expected better from Seinfeld
Penguins, Toys, Cars, Monsters and now Bees have their own light using the brilliance of computer animation and when hearing that Seinfeld, THE Jerry Seinfeld was himself writing and voicing one of the characters I was sure this movie would not fail to amuse. I have to admit that watching this film I was very disappointed, and that was simply because a man who can be named by many as being one of the greatest comedians of our time had stooped so low as to use Bee puns in order to get a laugh. During the movie things changed however and when Barry Benson entered into the court case when suing the humans, we are given some genuinely funny gags that can be attributed as funny yet true.

The story revolves around Barry Benson a Bee who's graduated from Bee University and is now forced to make a choice as to which job in the hive to take that he will work for the rest of his life. He isn't happy with that and decides to go out one day with the pollen jocks who are the bees who go out and collect the pollen to help make the honey. While on this trip he's accidentally lost and meets a human who saves his life, he thanks her and they become friends (Although she's freaked out by a talking bee). While out with her one day shopping he discovers the honey shelf and finds out the humans kidnap bee queens and hold captive bees in order for them to make honey in artificial hives. Because of this, Barry decides he must punish the humans and sues them.

Although the comedy does lack, it picks up towards the end and actually becomes quite intelligent. During the court case itself you can't help but notice the racial undertones when talking about bees being taken as slaves in work camps etc. John Goodman plays the stereotypical southern lawyer who is in favour of the bees being taken as slaves in work camps. The movie itself is quite intelligent especially when touching on the subject of lawsuits and the true repercussions a lawsuit can have. It's an enjoyable film but if you're expecting a hysterical Seinfeld classic then you will be sorely disappointed, it's good but be warned.

Rene Zellweger looking her most "suggestive" yet ...

I rarely, if ever, notice what MPAA Rating a film has received as it is something I have NEVER had to worry about. I used to go to drive-in movies to watch The Exorcist and The Omen when I was but a fragile fawn in the woods collecting twigs. But when I saw that it was rated PG for 'mildly suggestive humor', it caught my attention. I thought: That's something you don't see everyday.

So, maybe it was the scenes where the angle of the viewers perspective was beneath the beautiful young girl's long legs and curvaceous body with that short, short skirt and her huge blinking eyes and wry smile. Maybe it was the many slick references to The Graduate. I was a little too reminded of all the much-more suggestive Japanese Anime that I've ingested in the last decade watching the first fifteen minutes. I guess at some point, the inclusion of "suggestive" material would have to happen to mainstream Western animation, too. We export so much "suggestive" and "explicit" material, it goes without saying that even a Dreamworks movie would someday co-opt a little of that market as well. For that, I guess as a thirty-something -- I'm thankful. I've never seen Renee Zellweger looking so trim and glowing and 'come hither'. Being a married man and having to understand the basic frailties of my wife and the way she looks, I'm sure Renee was probably intensely satisfied with her characters appearance as well. It was a highlight, even if they put most of the suggestive material on the front-end of the movie.

The second half of the movie then turns into a message-driven cautionary tale about Mankind's exploitation of bees, which is probably a long time coming and a good message for kids. I can understand the frustration of one reviewer, seeing that he's a bee farmer and that the film wasn't "correct" in all its descriptions of a real bee's life and the nomenclature of its existence. But the truth is, even if you do get your bread and butter from bee farming, being socially aware of our impact on the world of bees is a good message, no matter how you slice it. And, oh yeah, I think we all know that bees don't speak English (or Spanish), don't sip latte's, wear sweaters or study legal documents and seek to litigate for labor law violations and community infraction.

I laughed out loud and followed this movie in rapt attention from beginning to end as did my wife, who couldn't help saying that "it's so cute" numerous times. I was very impressed with this and will probably watch it again, adding it to the short-list of animated films that I keep out for repeat viewing.

And anybody that can work in an angle to put Sting on the witness stand and give him a lecture about his nom de plume has my vote ... very funny stuff. Gord Lord ... Gordon Sumner!

Fun For The Whole Family
Bee Movie was actually to my suprise pretty good. it was a silly kids movie that people of all ages will enjoy. we need more movies like this, shrek & Ice age.

Yuck
Please excuse me while I rant.

I was appalled by the complete lack of even the most elementary facts about the lives of honeybees. However, if you can give insects four legs instead of six, make them speak English, dress them up in sweaters, and make them fall in love with humans, I guess anything goes. *sigh*

First, honeybees have black bodies with yellow stripes, not the other way around. They do not pick a job and stick to it. Rather, as they age, they are genetically programmed to graduate to a vast variety of tasks in succession, spending the last halves of their lives as foragers. Male bees do NOT have stingers and they do ZERO work. In fact, they are barely tolerated by the workers and are kicked out of the colony at the end of the year. The hive, under normal conditions, is over 99% female. There are no hunky male "pollen jocks" sucking up pollen and spraying it everywhere because they somehow know it is good for flowers. In fact, the cartoon doesn't even portray the importance of pollen to the bees themselves. They somehow do it to be altruistic to the humans and flowers.

I am a beekeeper. My main beef is that somewhere around the middle of the cartoon, the whole thing turns Marxist. Beekeepers are portrayed as evil exploiters of the apian working class, gassing them with smoke, laughing diabolically, generally behaving violently, and stealing their honey. Hmph. I love my bees and enjoy caring for them, as does every beekeeper. I treat them gently and they return the favor. In the movie, the bees end up suing the humans, and win, and all the honey is returned to the bees. Double Hmph. The bees get lazy and stop working. Nothing is pollinated, all plants die, and the world is on the verge of total collapse. (They got that part of the communist experiment right, at least.) Imminent doom is near. (Typical environmentalist hyperbole.) The bees realize the consequences of their lawsuit and decide to start pollinating again to save the humans. (Typical happy ending that must be provided in every cartoon.)

OK. It's a cute movie with many witty moments but some parts are just cheesy and painful. I thought the portrayal of the defense lawyer as an out of control religious nut was particularly hilarious. In the end, the honeybees actually go back to work for the humans and both humans and bees have a renewed appreciation for each other, so the message in the end isn't entirely bad. Still, I don't like the idea that kids might leave the movie hating beekeepers and feeling guilty for eating honey "stolen" from the bees. Honeybees, by their nature, will usually produce up from one to four hundred pounds of honey per hive per year in excess of what they need for survival. It is their instinct to do this as long as they have the space and resources. We humans simply discovered how to manage the bees, give them plenty of good habitat, and harvest the excess crop. Good for us. Beekeepers have made plenty of mistakes along the way but that hasn't really included taking too much honey away from bees. I challenge anyone to think of a tree that has a hollow big enough to produce such a vast storage space for honey as the modern Langstroth beehive.

I know, I know... it's only a cartoon, don't make such a big deal out of it. I do feel, though, that other cartoons have been much more true to the actual natural history and general biology of whatever species is being depicted and that this particular cartoon was both grossly scientifically inaccurate and overly political on various levels. In this movie, beekeepers were depicted as diabolically evil. There were also animal rights messages ... "Why is your life of any more value than mine?" is a particular quote by a bee that had me angry. One doesn't encounter that kind of unrealistic conflict between humans and animals in classics like Peter Rabbit. Yucky.

A more accurate (and perhaps more interesting) cartoon would have explored the feminist world of the hive in which a few males enjoy their brief lives as sex workers with the queen, after which their genitals snap off and they die. The 99% female population would then gang up on the rest of the small male minority that never got to mate, wrestling the lazy SOBs out one by one to starve and freeze in the cold so that they could achieve their efficient female, collectivist utopia at last.... Muahahahahaha!

Of course, such a cartoon could not be rated G. :)