Flip through the latest issue of Gulf Weekly.
Watch out for Bee Movie ... anything but a B-movie which has the critics buzzing with excitement.
Bee Movie is a fairy tale about the inspiring glory of punching the clock, according to Entertainment Weekly reviewer Owen Gleiberman, adding that there's no denying that the jokes in this bedazzling animated feature seem, at first, a bit conventional, if not corny.
Jerry Seinfeld, who co-wrote and produced the film, lends his patented nasal-voiced skepticism to Barry B. Benson, a Central Park hive dweller buzzing for adventure.
Barry lands in the apartment of Vanessa Bloome (RenŽe Zellweger), a sweet lady romantically linked, for no good reason, to a lunatic (Patrick Warburton) who never speaks lower than a scream.
Barry and Vanessa become friends; he even develops a crush on her.
If that strikes you as odd - shouldn't Barry have some honey of a bee girl he's in love with? - welcome to the loopy eccentricity of Bee Movie, which is just getting rolling.
Barry discovers that honey, stolen from bees, is sold to humans in supermarkets; that many of his fellows are kept in slave labour camps (i.e., honey farms); and that no other bees know about it.
Seinfeld perfectly channels our hero's dismay.
Bee Movie is about how Barry saves the world, and without giving more away, let me just say that the film is nutty, ecological, antically funny, and moving, all at the same time.
It's also a fable for our 24/7 worker-bee age. We're used to animated films like Ratatouille that salute those who don't go with the flow, but Bee Movie takes a paradoxically fresher tack.
In this movie, the power of the individual turns out to be overrated.
It's the system that's precious, and if that message sounds a tad ... reactionary, Bee Movie finds a touching beauty in it ... a fairy tale about the inspiring glory of punching the clock?
