Bee Movie Review

In the glut of CGI animated feature films that have been released over the past few years, studios have developed certain gimmicks to try to make their movies stand out from the other flicks about talented penguins and snarky fairy tale creatures. Chief among these techniques is casting big name celebrities to provide voices for the characters.

Over the Hedge would probably be just as good a movie with someone else besides Bruce Willis playing a cartoon raccoon, but having stars in the cast can get a movie added attention. Besides, the actors really enjoy the easy paycheck they get from spending just a day or two in a sound studio.

It would seem that Bee Movie is riding this same gravy train, casting sitcom superstar Jerry Seinfeld in the lead role as a talking honey bee. The project has been hyped relentlessly, with Seinfeld showing up everywhere from the usual talk show circuit to special extra-length television commercials to sell tickets. One might expect that, given the level of hype, that this is a standard animated feature about a heroic bee that saves the hive by learning to be himself, or some such cliché.

That's true to a certain degree, but Bee Movie delightfully exceeds those expectations. Much of the credit for that should go to Seinfeld, who created the concept on the fly while having dinner with Steven Spielberg. Seinfeld also co-produced the picture and led the writing team.

Seinfeld provides the voice for Barry B. Benson, a bee going through a rite of passage by graduating from bee college and preparing to choose a lifetime bee job. But Barry is a dreamer. He doesn't want to just take one of the usual jobs in the hive, especially not for the rest of his life.

On a whim, he horns in on an expedition with the pollen collectors, flying outside the hive to explore New York's Central Park. However, Barry's naiveté gets him into trouble when he wanders among humans for the first time. When florist Vanessa Bloom (Renee Zellweger) saves his life, in gratitude he decides to break Bee Rule Number One: "No talking to humans."

After struggling through an awkward introductory period, Barry and Vanessa become good friends. Many animated features settle in for a formula plotline at this point, relying on the voice cast to keep the sitcom-style gags flowing while the misfit heroes save Christmas, or save the nature preserve, or alert the world to global warming. Not Bee Movie. Seinfeld takes the plot in the unexpected direction of screwball farce.

While fraternizing with his new friend, Barry becomes more and more disenchanted with his prospects in the hive – illustrated by a clever parody of The Graduate. His fires of enthusiasm are relit – and the plot takes a wicked twist - when he discovers that humans have been harvesting and eating the honey that bees have been spending their lives making for millions of years. He decides to get justice by the most direct method: Filing a massive lawsuit.

A moviegoer may nitpick here over how Barry is able to practice law without passing the BAR, or whether it is legal for a bee to file a lawsuit. Or you can just relax and have some fun – if you accept that bees can talk and just choose not to let us know about it, a lot of the details can slide.

Besides, most of the gags are funny. Some are funny enough that you might miss the next joke while laughing. The big name cast has a lot of fun hiding behind cartoon faces, including Sting, Ray Liotta and Larry King, who get to make fun of themselves a bit. Patrick Warburton, who does a lot of cartoon voice work, stands out here by providing his own loutish screen persona in animated form. Even though he plays a villain who tries to kill Barry several times, he's so much fun that he can't be disliked.

Star-heavy casts can make animated films devolve into a form of illustrated radio. Bee Movie escapes that trap, making the most of the format's opportunities for visual poetry. Barry's flight through New York is pure cinema, reflecting our hero's evolving attitudes with constantly shifting perspectives and eye-popping colors.

The movie may have too much Seinfeld for its own good, as Barry is in just about every scene. There are a lot of fun characters, so a subplot here and there to get away from Barry might have been welcome. However, its Seinfeld's worldview and sense of humor that makes the film such a joy.