The majority of Dreamworks’ animated films are second rate compared to those of Pixar. For every Antz, there’s a much better A Bug’s Life. In a year dominated by the brilliance of Pixar’s Ratatouille, Dreamworks’ Bee Movie plays out more
like a B-movie (pun intended) than an
A-list competitor.

Bee Movie is the brainchild of comedian Jerry Seinfeld. With Seinfeld, Dreamworks had the perfect opportunity to produce an animated feature about insects that could swim in the same genome pool as the creepy crawlies of A Bug’s Life. Instead, there’s very little sting to this movie and, aside from a few select moments of brilliance, Seinfeld’s film about the lives of bees is largely inconsistent, unfunny, and visually uninspiring.

Barry Benson (Seinfeld) and his buddy Adam (Matthew Broderick) have just finished their schooling and are ready to enter the adult-bee working world. In their hive, Honex is only one place to work and there Barry and Adam will perform the same mundane task of making honey every day for the rest of their lives. Of all the different types of jobs at Honex, Barry aspires to be a pollen jock. In the most glamorous and least routine of jobs, pollen jocks work outside the hive, gathering nectar and pollinating flowers.

As part of a trial run, Barry is allowed to fly with the pollen jocks as long as he does not talk to humans and retreats to the hive when it rains. Barry does neither. He gets caught up in a rainstorm and is rescued by a bee-friendly florist named Vanessa Bloome (Renée Zellweger). Vanessa harbours him safely inside her apartment, and the two talk for hours sharing coffee and crumb cake. They find that their lives are very similar despite their physical differences. Barry instantly falls in love.

But Bee Movie is not a love story, though the concept might make the film more appealing. Instead, it is a commentary on the importance bees play in our ecosystem. When Barry finds that humans are perpetrating a major injustice on his fellow bees, he enlists Vanessa’s help to set things right.

The final third of the film deals with Barry’s attempt to correct the ills he perceives and the consequences of his actions. Bee Movie is successful at making its point about bees and our ecosystem, but it achieves it so hastily in a final act that it is completely muddled and nonsensical. The message also begs the question: will small children even care about what bees do? All they care about is not getting stung. Now that they know more about bees, will they really want to get closer to them? I find it hard to believe.

David Levine