Slow-moving 'Bee Movie' deserves little buzz

Jerry Seinfeld gives voice to Barry B. Benson, a young bee fresh out of college who decides he doesn't want to jump straight into the workforce like every bee in the generation before him. It's an attitude that nearly destroys not just bee civilization but the planet itself.

Ignoring the advice of his best friend, Adam Flayman (Matthew Broderick), Barry leaves the hive to explore New York. He ends up befriending Vanessa Blume (Renée Zellweger), a florist who psychotically believes the life of a bee is just as important as the life of her boyfriend, Larry (Patrick Warburton), who is deathly allergic to them.

Barry and Vanessa team up to sue the human race, on behalf of bees, to stop the harvest of honey. As it turns out, a world without the human consumption of honey is a terrible thing. With all the honey returned to the hives, the bees become just as lazy as Barry, while flowers and vegetation start dying without bee pollination.

Written by Seinfeld and some other TV writers, the movie often stops to accommodate banter and visual set pieces. Because these elements are never incorporated into what little there is of a plot, they end up making the slow-moving comedy feel even longer than it actually is.

The riskiest move Seinfeld made was to create an unlikable protagonist who is wrong every step of the way, but treat him like a hero. Meanwhile the human villains are treated as evil, yet they are the smartest and sanest characters in the story.

The moral of the story is that all bees need to work together, but that is undercut by the fact that Barry ends up working for himself, outside the hive, as a lawyer bringing other frivolous lawsuits from oppressed animals against the human race. Are you laughing yet?

Via seattlepi