Seinfeld Being A BEE — MOVIE Assessment
The combination of Jerry Seinfeld’s comic talents and a large-scale CG animated movie about bees doesn’t on the surface appear to be a natural fit. After watching it, I realised that although there are some great moments stamped with Seinfeld’s humour which separate this movie from almost any other CG animated movie with an animal or insect in it, “Bee Movie” doesn’t really work as well as what it could have. A large part of this is in the interaction of the bees with humans. There are a few moments which are really funny, yet because the account moves along, it simply feels a growing number of absurd, to the point where I discovered me personally obtaining bored and planning to swap it well (a single accomplishment thinking about this motion picture is actually lower than 90 minutes long!). On the plus side, this film has some great visuals and colour, particularly when the bees fly around New York, and there are some moments in the first half of the film that are very funny, but overall this is a bit of a misfire from Seinfeld. Oh well, I guess he deserves points for trying.
We’re introduced to the world of Barry B. Benson (Seinfeld) in a rapid series of scenes that open the film. Barry has just graduated and is about to go to work for the Honex Corporation, the only career path available to bees in making honey for the hive. Barry is disappointed to discover that he’ll only ever be doing one job for the rest of his life. Disillusioned, he manages to find his way over to the pollen jocks (bees who collect pollen from the outside world) and decides to hitch a ride with them for the experience. His eyes are opened to a world that he never knew existed. All of these scenes work very well in the cute CG animated movie kind of way where we see bees driving around in little cars, an entire industrial system in place to create the honey, and a bee’s point of view of New York City which looks glorious underneath.
Things take a turn when Barry gets separated from the pollen jocks, finds himself in the rain and then crash lands in to the apartment of Vanessa (Zellweger). Her boyfriend Ken (Patrick Warburton) wants to kill Barry but she saves his life and lets Barry fly away. Barry decides to go back in to thank the girl with regard to conserving his living, as well as in the hysterical landscape, Craig verbally many thanks Vanessa. The dialogue and performance in this scene are the best in the film, particularly from Renee Zellweger who is in complete quirky disbelief that she’s talking to a bee. Seinfeld does some of his best material here too, and you can tell some ad-libbing must have been going on.
The story moves along with Barry and Vanessa establishing a friendship, much to the disdain of his bee colony. But when Barry and Vanessa venture in to a supermarket and Barry sees honey on sale, he is outraged and decides to sue humans for stealing all their honey. This is where the film goes off the rails. You can probably see how this would be funny on paper, but realised visually and practically in this film, and the way it’s done leaves a lot to be desired. It starts off as a funny joke but then becomes sillier and sillier. I know it’s a movie, AND it’s a cartoon, but there was something inherently unbelievable about all the humans taking bees seriously in the first place without even getting to the point where they could take each other on in court. Aside from that flawed concept, the plot becomes very clunky in its delivery; the court rules in favour of Barry and as such all the honey gets returned to the bees. They stop working, and then all the flowers in the world start to die. This almost makes it a second film altogether as the story shifts focus yet again towards Barry saving the world by repolinating the last remaining flowers that exist. Again, looks good on paper but the delivery is very clunky, without much rhythm or flow for how one scene will lead in to the next. I found that once the court sequences were done that the movie almost felt finished from a pacing stand point, but then it picks up again and that’s where it started to drag. Or maybe it was the scene where the bees from Barry’s hive manage to carry a plane under their own power back to the airport to safely deliver the last flowers that finally did it for me.
There are a few positives at work. The visuals are absolutely stunning. The colours are so rich and vibrant that they literally fly off the screen and massage your eye balls. The images of New York are fabulous, as are the interior workings of the bee hive. Also, Seinfeld has collected a spectacular voice cast for this film in addition to himself; Renee Zellweger is very quirky and funny. John Goodman is funny as the over the top southern lawyer who represents the honey makers in court. Chris Rock is his usual self as an hilarious mosquito who is looking for blood. And then there’s celebrities playing themselves, like Larry King and Ray Liotta. Overall, a great cast and they all have some wonderful individual moments
Related website : www.mov-ie.net/bee-movie.html | Easy Movie Player | Stream Online Movies – Top CB Vendor!
November 15, 2010
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Posted by Jam Man
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