A few times I enjoyed a hearty laugh while watching Bee Movie.
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I have always felt in the minority when it comes to Jerry Seinfeld. I didn´t particularly enjoy his long-running television show and have completely been unable to comprehend how he continues to receive superstar credibility with doing pretty much nothing since "Seinfeld" ended roughly ten years ago. Aside from bit parts in "Pros & Cons" and "The Thing About My Folks," Seinfeld has flown beneath the radar until last year´s "Bee Movie," which was written by, produced by and starred Jerry Seinfeld as the lead voice talent. The film performed admirably at the box office and grossed well over $100 million. After finally watching "Bee Movie," I´m tending to think a lot of its success was because of the near-mythical Seinfeld´s involvement.
The animated DreamWorks picture is no "Shrek." While it does contain a few very nicely executed laughs, the film suffers terribly from a weak storyline. With the recent unexplained mass deaths of honey bees, I´m not sure if Seinfeld and company weren´t trying to create a film with a simple message that if we don´t soon learn to understand the bees, we won´t have any pollen to keep our beautiful flowers, fruit and vegetables growing. Whether or not Seinfeld intended underlying commentary about the rash of deaths in the world´s honey bee population or not, the film´s essential plotline is that a young bee decides to not pick a job to do until he dies. He then goes out into the world and befriends a young female florist and realizes he has to sue the world because of their theft of honey. This causes an unnatural balance in nature and the bee must fix things.
To get into a little more detail, Barry B. Benson (Seinfeld) has graduated bee high school. He and his best friend Adam Flayman (Matthew Broderick) quickly find themselves thrust into the workforce, but Barry doesn´t seem to think having just one job for his entire life is a good thing. He takes to the world with some ´Pollen Jocks´ and becomes separated from his hive during a rain storm and is nearly killed by a human named Ken (Patrick Warburton), but Vanessa Bloome (Renee Zellweger) stops Ken from killing Benson. After some internal toil and discussion, Barry decides that he must break a major bee rule and talk to Vanessa to thank her for saving his life. Of course, she is shocked.
The friendship grows between bee and girl and Barry´s breaking of the biggest bee rule causes a lot of problems. The overly stuck-up-on-himself Ken finds himself losing the love of Vanessa. More importantly, Barry discovers commercial bee hives and takes the world to court for reparations to the bees for all of the honey ´stolen´ by man and for the poor treatment of the hive bees used by man. A long court battle between Barry and Layton T. Montgomery (John Goodman) results and eventually, Barry makes his case to the court and so much honey is returned to the bees, they never have to work again. This causes nearly all the trees and plants to wilt when the bees stop carrying pollen from one plant to another.
"Bee Movie" has a few very good laughs to help keep its sub-par story from sinking completely. The whole bee-meets-girl, bee-sues-world and then bee-flies-plane series of events are unimaginative and silly considering a singular little bee becomes a savior and a hero with such magnitude. Instead of Seinfeld having his little bees cause problems in a garden or a small community, he thrusts his little been onto the world stage and the character of Barry becomes the single most important life form on the planet. Where other animated films such as "A Bugs Life" or "Antz" provided a big insect world that fit nicely into the confines of a very small part of the world, "Bee Movie" feels overambitious and misguided. Is Seinfeld feeding a gargantuan ego with this storyline?
The voice talent all does a splendid job. Seinfeld brings many characteristics of his brand of comedy to the role of young Barry. He doesn´t go over the top and it is somewhat believable that Barry is young and naïve to the world. Zellweger brings warmth to her character, but I couldn´t help but think I saw her character in "Ratatouille." Broderick and Goodman are also entertaining in their roles, but the underrated Patrick Warburton steals nearly every scene he is in. Ever since his perfect portrayal of the Tick in the live-action series, I´ve appreciated Warburton´s handle on animated and comic-book characters. Chris Rock, Kathy Bates, Oprah Winfrey, Rip Torn and Barry Levinson have smaller supporting roles in the film. Sting, Larry King and Ray Liotta parody themselves in the film and I must admit that I´m surprised they took part in the self-deprecating humor.
The computer animated film looks very good. While DreamWorks cannot compete on the same level as Pixar in the story department, they are narrowing the gap in technology and "Bee Movie" looks very good. Particle effects, textures and lighting are all impressive in "Bee Movie." The hair technology used to bring Barry and other characters hair and fur may not be as awe-inspiring as Sully´s fur in "Monsters, Inc.," but the movement of Vanessa´s hair flowed naturally. Hair is one of the things that CGI continues to struggle with, but the animators created some great algorithms to handle the effects of wind, body movement and other factors that force hair to move. Waterdrops were nicely rendered as well. I won´t say that "Bee Movie" is the best-looking computer animated film, but it is above average and one of the better non-Pixar films.
A few times I enjoyed a hearty laugh while watching "Bee Movie." There were some very funny moments in the little animated film. I´m not a fan of Jerry Seinfeld´s but he had some good laughs, although the supporting cast provided more humor than the star. Chris Rock´s line about how a mosquito can become a lawyer with just a briefcase was a great close to the film. Unfortunately, I was less than enthused with the story and pacing of "Bee Movie." I could have loved this film if Barry and his adventures were mostly focused on the bee world and not the realm of man, but Seinfeld intended his little bee to become bigger than the world and that huge plot was just a little too much for such a little bee. I don´t feel as if I wasted my time watching "Bee Movie" and I would perhaps watch the movie again at some point. It is just that I wasn´t overwhelmed or even impressed with Seinfeld´s first true outing since his television show ended in 1998.
Video:
"Bee Movie" is a computer-animated film and this allows the digitally created picture to easily and perfectly translate to the digital DVD format. The 1.85:1 anamorphic transfer looks quite splendid on DVD. I have to admit that I am a little depressed that the HD-DVD was canned, because it would have looked incredible. Animated films can sometimes suffer when thrown through a line-doubling upconvert player, but "Bee Movie" looked stunning when thrown up to 1080p resolution. This says a lot for the amount of detail present in the transfer and how stable the picture quality is. CGI-based animated films have long been the best looking films on the digital format and "Bee Movie" continues that tradition with a perfect DVD transfer that is easily reference material.
The high level of detail present in "Bee Movie" is bested only by the amazing coloring in the film. The most colorful sequence in the film was the Archies "Sugar, Sugar" dream sequence where Barry dreamed of a picnic with Vanessa. The yellows, purples, greens and blues all leaped from my LCD with a vibrancy that rivaled anything I´ve seen yet. Sure, bees wear almost exclusively yellows and blacks in the film, but the world around them is a very colorful place and the flowers they pollinate are superb. Going back to detail, this is about as highly detailed as DVD gets. The hairs on the bees thorax and abdomen show how fine the detail is. The print is pristine and the digital source allowed for no flaws in DVD mastering. Simply put, "Bee Movie" is the bee´s knees in visuals.
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