Why? That is the important question. Why was this movie made at all? I know Seinfeld was a "show about nothing" and I am a Seinfeld fan. This was a movie about nothing, but unlike the TV show, Bee Movie was agonizingly unfunny, pointless, and meandering. Whoever green-lighted this script clearly has a substance abuse problem.
I see lots of people are falling all over themselves with praise because this movie is cute, harmless, and not dirty. For goodness sake, folks, raise your standards! This is 2007! CG movies with cute characters are a dime a dozen. As consumers, we should express a desire for genuinely worthwhile, well thought, funny kids/CG movies. Otherwise, we will get more and more of this drivel, and worse. The only good point for Bee Movie, is that they did not descend into a bunch of toilet humor. On the other hand, the instances that you could call "humor" at all were few and far between.
They anthropromorphized something else non-human. This is not a bad idea in itself, but it has been done so much better before; giving life stories and every little nuance of human civilization to Bees. Everything has clever little names, mostly variants of "bee" or "honey." Only problem is that in this case, most of the clever naming and theming of the bee world falls flat, stupid, and causes eye rolls - as opposed to say, Cars, which did it about a thousand times better.
Next to Bee Movie, even the usual also-rans of animation such as Over the Hedge, and Madagascar, seem like genuine masterpieces and instant classics. I snickered a time or two, but sitting through the rest was in no way worth it. Children who are simple enough to be held in awe by anything that is animated, will really dig this movie. I'm sure as their age and sophistication increase past 6 or 7, kids will even begin to wish this movie was as sharp and funny as the dozens of better CG movies they have been exposed to.
Sting and Ray Liota? That was just plain dumb, and really not worth revisiting several times in the movie. The movie pace and feel actually had a little mediocre passable groove going, until the idiotic lawsuit plot got rolling. That brought everything to a crashing halt. John Goodman's performance fell flat, seeming to be a chemical induced over the top fat lawyer with a huge drawl (in New York?) It was almost embarrassing to hear him desperately trying to do something funny with this disaster of a script. With a great script, he can do over the top and weird characters superbly like in O Brother and Big Lebowski, but here he should not have touched the part. Chris Rock was one of the funniest parts of the whole movie, making me chuckle more than any other character, although he was only around for about 3 minutes total. The 90 minute running time seemed to crawl by, and I would have sworn I had been in there at least 2 hours.
In summary, unlike other CG movies we are used to, this has next to nothing for the grownups, and not much more for the kids. I don't know if Seinfeld is washed up, his time is past, or just rich and lazy these days, but this is not a positive for his career. Take the kids if you must, but don't bother bringing your spouse. And you're certainly not going to find yourself sneaking this one in the DVD player when nobody else is around like some of us might occasionally find ourselves doing with The Incredibles or Ice age.
I see lots of people are falling all over themselves with praise because this movie is cute, harmless, and not dirty. For goodness sake, folks, raise your standards! This is 2007! CG movies with cute characters are a dime a dozen. As consumers, we should express a desire for genuinely worthwhile, well thought, funny kids/CG movies. Otherwise, we will get more and more of this drivel, and worse. The only good point for Bee Movie, is that they did not descend into a bunch of toilet humor. On the other hand, the instances that you could call "humor" at all were few and far between.
They anthropromorphized something else non-human. This is not a bad idea in itself, but it has been done so much better before; giving life stories and every little nuance of human civilization to Bees. Everything has clever little names, mostly variants of "bee" or "honey." Only problem is that in this case, most of the clever naming and theming of the bee world falls flat, stupid, and causes eye rolls - as opposed to say, Cars, which did it about a thousand times better.
Next to Bee Movie, even the usual also-rans of animation such as Over the Hedge, and Madagascar, seem like genuine masterpieces and instant classics. I snickered a time or two, but sitting through the rest was in no way worth it. Children who are simple enough to be held in awe by anything that is animated, will really dig this movie. I'm sure as their age and sophistication increase past 6 or 7, kids will even begin to wish this movie was as sharp and funny as the dozens of better CG movies they have been exposed to.
Sting and Ray Liota? That was just plain dumb, and really not worth revisiting several times in the movie. The movie pace and feel actually had a little mediocre passable groove going, until the idiotic lawsuit plot got rolling. That brought everything to a crashing halt. John Goodman's performance fell flat, seeming to be a chemical induced over the top fat lawyer with a huge drawl (in New York?) It was almost embarrassing to hear him desperately trying to do something funny with this disaster of a script. With a great script, he can do over the top and weird characters superbly like in O Brother and Big Lebowski, but here he should not have touched the part. Chris Rock was one of the funniest parts of the whole movie, making me chuckle more than any other character, although he was only around for about 3 minutes total. The 90 minute running time seemed to crawl by, and I would have sworn I had been in there at least 2 hours.
In summary, unlike other CG movies we are used to, this has next to nothing for the grownups, and not much more for the kids. I don't know if Seinfeld is washed up, his time is past, or just rich and lazy these days, but this is not a positive for his career. Take the kids if you must, but don't bother bringing your spouse. And you're certainly not going to find yourself sneaking this one in the DVD player when nobody else is around like some of us might occasionally find ourselves doing with The Incredibles or Ice age.