Necessary Roughness

My mother-in-law, frequent radio contest winner, scored some tickets to see Bee Movie, the Dreamworks animation starring Jerry Seinfield.

Seinfeld voices Barry B. Benson, a “bee college” grad who doesn’t want to get stuck in a single job all his life, instead opting to see the world and ending up in the flower bed of a florist. Upon discovering how much honey we consume, Benson sues and manages to get honey production shut down, with unintended consequences.

This movie was cute, and there were a couple of very funny spots. Thankfully most of the humor was situational, with little reliance on replacing syllables with “bee” and no reliance on toilet humor. There were a couple of Jewish/beeish jokes, but they weren’t inflammatory. The movie is pretty kid safe, but my poor younger daughter fell asleep. Some of the musical cues are lightly humorous too.

There were a couple of plot holes, such as Barry not suffering a reprimand when he breaks the BIG rule that bees aren’t supposed to talk to humans. The problem that is created when Benson wins his lawsuit is rectified in a manner that the target audience may not understand. There were a couple of pieces of social commentary, but no edgy Shrek-style or political shots. The visuals are great, of course, and the vocal performances of Seinfield, Renée Zellweger, John Goodman, Matthew Broderick, and other sell the movie quite well.