I watched the Bee Movie footage at the Cannes Film Festival, I listened to Jerry Seinfeld do a funny riff about it, and it all seemed fine. I said on the day of the Cannes thing that “I’m half into it…I like ‘silly’ if the movie really goes for it whole-hog.” But this one-sheet is just…what is it? It’s dull and smug like cereal-box art. It seems afraid to say or do anything that might define the movie in some specific attitudinal way, and thereby persuade some of us to actually sit up and take notice.
I recounted the Bee plot last May: “Barry B. Benson (Seinfeld) is a bee who’s not thrilled at the idea of doing just making honey for the rest of his life. A disillusioned insect who wants to be different…the same idea Woody Allen had in Antz.
“Barry gets to leave the hive on a honeysuckle mission in Manhattan’s Central Park, and he eventually runs into humans who try to swat him to death. Barry is saved by Vanessa (Renee Zellweger), a kind-hearted hottie, and he promptly falls in love. Kind of a King Kong-Ann Darrow romance in reverse.
“Then he decides to talk to her. English, that is. Then he learns about the human honey business, and decides that humans are ripping off the bees in order to do so, and so files a lawsuit to try and prevent this.”
Bee Movie comes out on 11.2. Chris Rock, Matthew Broderick, Oprah Winfrey, Sting and Ray Liotta (among many others) voice the other bees and humans who figure in the plot.
