movie review - Bee Movie
the journal of Michael Werneburg
twenty-seven years and one million words
This is an animated movie set in a bee hive. All bees are industrious except one who is not interested in any of the jobs in the hive and wants .. something else. The attempts at setting an effectively human story in a bee hive is that it stretches things beyond all recognition. The "hero" is faced with a problem that no member of a social hive structure can possibly have .. so why bother? There's rivalry between the main character and other bees in a certain job to which the character aspires, there is pointless use of technology to collect pollen, and the bees routinely do things that make so little sense as to further weaken any interest in the story. Then it turns out that the bees have the ability to speak to humans, and our "hero" discovers that humans are using slave bee colonies to produce honey for our use so the story dives into a protracted court case. Incredibly, there's then a third segment to the movie that's simply too stupid to relate.
Along the way, it's riddled with tiresome puns related to all things bee and hive and honey. The main character is an unlikable, arrogant, bore whose sense of entitlement is of course borne out by the events in the movie.
They called it "Bee Movie" to invoke the old term B-movie, meaning something produced without the resources or talent to fully effect the vision. You know, like the Star Wars movie, "The Phantom Menace". But those tend to be made in good faith. I'd call this a lazy and cynical cash-grab but someone pissed away $150,000,000 on this, which is Michael Bay money. So I'll call it a lazy and cynical indulgence. The main character is played by Jerry Seinfeld, who seems to revel in making stuff that's devoid of meaning and I should have known that this wouldn't work. My four year old tired of this thing during all the dull court-room. And at his age, he'll readily re-watch "The Phantom Menace".
Avoid.