It’s something of a coup that Jerry Seinfeld has managed to mangle together 90 minutes worth of semi-decent bee jokes for his feature-writing debut. Alas, it’s probably the only noteworthy aspect in this otherwise waxen slab of digitally animated anthropomorphism which is little more than a series of loosly linked sketches with the odd celebrity cameo (does Sting count?) squeezed into the process for adult viewers. Seinfeld lends his shrill but solipsistic ‘Noo Yoik’ drawl to the voice of Barry B Benson, a sprightly honeybee determined to break free from the punchclock tedium of hive life in order to experience the outside world. In doing so, he makes the shock discovery that humans harvest and consume the honey which so many of his bee brethren have toiled to produce. He decides to file a lawsuit against the entire human race.
Where a film like ‘Ratatouille’ had the good grace to counterbalance some of its more far-fetched plot machinations with a surfeit of wit and wisdom, ‘Bee Movie’ piles up the big asks without once stopping to offer the point to all of this. Passes the time, but undoutedly one for the little ’uns.