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GLENN KENNY'S REVIEW (posted 11/1/07)

It is often noted that the atmosphere in the realm of the wealthy, renowned, and powerful is a rarefied one, but sometimes you've got to wonder if that's just a euphemistic way of saying their air is a little thin. If Jerry Seinfeld is to be believed, this movie's genesis was a dinner at the Hamptons house of Steven Spielberg, wherein Seinfeld made a cheesy pun on the term "B-Movie," suggesting that a homophone of the phrase would make a great title for a movie about bees. Should you or I try to pitch such an idea to Mr. Spielberg in earnest, the most we might earn is the mockery of his bodyguards. Seinfeld being Seinfeld, he was encouraged to "develop" his "idea."

Several years and umpteen million dollars later, we have the animated Bee Movie, in which Seinfeld, also a writer and producer on the film, voices Barry B. Benson, an enthusiastic young drone who longs to see what life is like outside the hive. A pretty classic anthropomorphized cartoon-animal plot setup, you'll agree. And Bee Movie is at its most clever as it both sets up and sends itself up; the jokes aren't so much about hive life as they are about, well, how ridiculous it is to even attempt to anthropomorphize hive life. This blithely postmodern territory is, as fans of Seinfeld's sitcom know, where his humor best thrives. But once Bee Movie enters the human world, and Berry goes goofy over florist Vanessa (Zellweger) and indignant over the fact that humans are stealing his kind's raison d'etre, honey, the picture is increasingly unable to split the difference between goofily absurd (best exemplified by the unlikely presence of Ray Liotta) and toothlessly inane.

While the superstar voice cameos in the courtroom sequences testify to the showbiz clout that's become a signature feature of Seinfeld's persona, the sappy platitudes that are de rigueur for this genre go way against the grain of his genial, bottomless cynicism. The result is oddly schizoid, but also so insubstantial that to call it oddly schizoid suggests a weight it doesn't have. Kids will like it — the bees are awfully cute — but parents may yearn for a fix of the real nothing from one of the Seinfeld box sets when they get home.