Classic Review: Bee Movie (2007)

Jerry Seinfeld is easily one of the most beloved figures in television history. He co-created a sitcom, Seinfeld, that achieved the rare distinction of earning both high ratings and critical acclaim. People look back on the series with a great deal of fondness and when the series ended in 1998, Seinfeld was riding on a high. His reputation couldn’t have been better and he surprised many when he chose to go back to stand-up comedy instead of pursuing financially lucrative film deals. He never really made an attempt to become a major film star and appeared happy to reject the numerous offers that were being thrown at him. 

When he suddenly announced that he was attached to a children’s film called Bee Movie about a bee falling in love with a human woman, it’s fair to say that his fans were puzzled by this unusual career choice. Rather than staying in his lane and making a comedy for adults about the issues they face in their day-to-day lives, he was trying to target children. Pre-adolescents were never the world’s biggest fans of Seinfeld and his style of humor as it did not typically focus on topics that were relevant to them. He was working with Steven Spielberg, who did know how to satisfy younger audiences, but people were still hesitant to embrace this seemingly peculiar project. 

Once the film was finally released, audiences’ worst fears were confirmed. Seinfeld had included a lot of adult humor in the screenplay and failed to adequately explain why the film was so supportive of bestiality. It didn’t receive the rave reviews that had been accorded to Seinfeld’s other projects and it ended up becoming an embarrassment of sorts. Internet hipsters have since used screenshots from the film as fodder for memes and people still have a field day tearing it apart. 

Meanwhile, the ludicrous plot of Bee Movie also did not help its case. Seinfeld chose to tell a story about a nebbish bee called Barry B. Benson (Seinfeld) with plans to become a businessman and work for Honex industries. He has grown up believing that bees are never exploited by human beings and is happy to exist in his own little bubble. When he gets lost during a pollen-gathering expedition, he encounters Vanessa (Zellweger), a beautiful human woman who is exceptionally compassionate towards bees. The two form an unconventional bond and he becomes incensed about the fact that human beings exploit and abuse bees in their efforts to produce and sell honey. He decides to sue the human race for exploiting bee workers and the case becomes a cause célèbre in the human world.

It’s easy to see why many have poked fun at a film that was this ill-conceived. Seinfeld wasn’t truly up to the task of making an animated children’s film and there are a couple of rough stretches in the film’s third act but it makes up for all that by being so insistently weird. So many children’s films feel like slick, well oiled machines that completely fail to do anything new with the stories that they tell. Bee Movie is hardly revolutionary or groundbreaking but it does have some of the rough edges that one just can’t find in something like The Good Dinosaur. It doesn’t feel like it was made by committee and focus grouped to death. There is the sense that somebody was trying to imprint their own unique sense of humor onto a strange concept. If he had been slightly more successful, it would be easier to imagine a modern cinema landscape in which children’s films don’t seem quite so bland. 

Personally, there should be more incest jokes in animated films. There is clearly a dark, highly sexual subtext behind most stories that were written for a youthful audience and Bee Movie has the bravery to come right out and make the subtext explicit. On some level, that means that it uses less complicated storytelling devices. It doesn’t have the depth that is often attributed to a film like The Incredibles. By the same token, it ends up feeling more frivolous and purely entertaining than one of Brad Bird’s more serious efforts. Seinfeld wasn’t aiming to teach kids a lesson or radically change their worldview. He wanted to tell jokes for an hour and a half and in the end, he did succeed in writing some pretty funny material and even when it isn’t perfectly executed, it still elicits amusement. 

While it does sound rather silly arguing that children’s films should be less ambitious, they would benefit from featuring more of a personal touch. Bee Movie is no masterpiece, but at least it has a distinctive artistic voice behind it. 

still courtesy of Paramount Pictures

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Zita Short

I am passionate about screwball comedies from the 1930s and certain actresses from the Golden Age of Hollywood. I’ll aim to review new Netflix releases and write features, so expect a lot of romantic comedies and cult favourites.