Bee Movie - review

Bee Movie (U)

Dir. Steve Hickner and Simon J. Smith

Reviewed by Matt Adcock

There’s been quite a bit of buzz about this new CGI adventure from Dreamworks (our other film is Shrek) Animation. It stars a young bee named Barry (voiced by Jerry Seinfeld) who is dissatisfied with his lot in life as a worker drone – with only one career option – making honey for the hive.
Barry rebels and flies wild in Manhattan, where he gets into many bee shaped scrapes and meets various other bugs including Chris Rock's cool mosquito ‘Mooseblood’. After being saved by and making friends with a compassionate florist named Vanessa (René Zellweger), Barry discovers that we humans have been ‘stealing’ honey from bees the world over to spread on our toast. In an insane plot leap he then sues the entire human race in order to get back the honey his fellow bees have slaved to make. Cue amusing court drama that pits Barry and the bees against the Honey industry in the form of shady southern style defence lawyer, excellently voiced by John Goodman.
Without wanting to ruin the plot for you – just stop to imagine if the bees won back the world’s honey lake and no longer needed to go forth and pollinate our flowers… Yep we’re talking massive eco disaster and one, which only the bees can put right. Bee Movie certainly throws lots at the screen, some of which works well – Sting getting given a hard time for choosing a bee-ist name and a superb mid air rescue of a stricken jumbo jet by millions of bees are highlights. Other bits are more ho ‘hum’ like a laboured send up of the Larry King show and an unnecessary bemusing cameo by Ray Liotta but overall Bee Movie comes out mostly smelling of roses.
My boys really lapped up all the comic touches and even though my wife took the opportunity to catch a few zzzz’s I’d recommend this as a fair family movie experience.
Those without kids however might struggle to find enough adult orientated value to make this a must see, but for a lightly amusing Festive diversion it’s either this or the Disney princess loose in the real world ‘Enchanted’ – more on that next week.
It does seem though that the CGI movie production line is in real need of some new ideas after serving up cooking rats and litigious bees… Maybe filmmakers should, erm, let it ‘bee’ for a while?

Out of 5 you have to go with slick but average 3 (come on guys, we want more quality!!)...

Darkmatters ratings :

Action ööö – Fun and madcap
Laughs ööö – Some fun to be had but not really enough
Horror ö – Nothing very grim at all
Babes öö – CGI is kind to Zellweger

Overall ööö (Worth a look!)


"look at me... I'm buzzing!!"

Darkmatters: H O M E