Barry Bee Benson is, well… a bee. A bee facing a tough decision. Having just graduated from three days of college, he’s now got to decide what job he wants to perform in the hive. There’s just one catch. The job is forever and bees don’t have days off. Putting off making a choice, he decides to spend a day with the “pollen jockeys” flying outside the hive to gather ingredients for honey. While doing so he breaks a cardinal rule and speaks to a human. This sets in motion a series of events that leads to Barry discovering that humans steal honey from bees. He decides the only thing to do is sue the human race and take back the honey that bees work so hard to produce.

Admittedly that sounds like a pretty thin thread to hang a film on, and yet Bee Movie manages to make it work. It helps that at the helm is writer, producer, and voice of Barry… Jerry Seinfeld. Well known for his quirky, deadpan humor, it takes someone with his clout to get the voice talent attached to this animated film lined up.

Other notables include Renée Zellweger, Matthew Broderick, John Goodman, Chris Rock, and Patrick Warburton. Numerous stars make cameos as animated versions of themselves, including Sting, Larry King, and Ray Liotta. They even managed to get Oprah Winfrey involved in the project.

In a feature like Bee Movie, the performance is really a fusion between the animators and the voice talent. It’s hard to fault the visual performance here; Dreamworks Animation does a spectacular job. The 3D animation looks great. The voice acting on the other hand is a mixed bag. Seinfeld comes across pretty well, something I wondered about before seeing the film. It’s no surprise that Goodman and Warburton manage to hit their roles out of the park; both have extensive portfolios of voice work. Chris Rock is also notable here, though sadly underutilized as the voice of Mooseblood the Mosquito. The rest of the cast turn in serviceable performances but nothing that really drew my attention. In several cases it wasn’t until I watched the credits that I knew who was who.

So, thin premise, mixed voice acting, spectacular animation… does it work? Indeed it does, because of the humor. In my opinion, Bee Movie is another of those rare animated movies that is funny to children and still manages to entertain an adult audience, on a different level, at the same time. And it’s a remarkably inoffensive and positive movie, although perhaps beekeepers don’t come off so well. I hope the rest of Hollywood is watching and starts to pick up on the fact that comedy doesn’t require mean-spirited, over-the-top language, and blatant nudity to be funny. In fact, the only real gripe I had was the rampant product placement throughout; but that may be because it’s harder to blend that kind of thing into an animated feature.

If you’re looking for a good film to take the family to see, Bee Movie strikes me as a pretty decent choice all the way around.

Bee Movie is rated PG for “mild suggestive humor.” This one is about as clean as you’re going to find in a mainstream film. If you find something offensive in this one, you’re really trying too hard.

Courtesy of a local publicist, Michael attended a promotional screening of Bee Movie.