For all the hype, Bee Movie is a delicious kiss hello from Jerry Seinfeld, whose return to filmed entertainment after nearly a decade since the end of eponymous sitcom is enough to make you do Little Kicks in excitement. One had to admit though that there was some doubt. Did Jerry still have the man hands to bring the funny or was he going to come off looking like some kind of puffy shirted hipster doofus? But Festivus has come early this year, and this is no Must-Lie situation, as Jerry ably proves that he is now a master of a whole new domain.



Seinfeld voices Barry B. Benson, a recent college graduate that’s not sure if he’s ready to dedicate his life to doing a single job, all day, every day for the local honey monopoly Honex. Barry is drawn to the glamorous life of the “pollen jocks”, the bees that leave the hive to collect the ingredients to make the honey. When Barry travels with them outside the hive one day, he breaks the cardinal rule of beedom when he talks to a human (Renee Zellweger). The whole thing starts Barry on a course that will revolutionize the way humans see bees and the way bees see the world.



In its own bizarre way, Bee Movie reminded me of an old episode of Seinfeld. Rather simplistically, the sitcom was always called a show about nothing, when really it was about nothing in particular. In this respect Bee Movie is the same as Barry bounces from one adventure to another that’s all sort of loosely collected as a central story. Not that there’s anything wrong with that because the result is often quite funny. Skewering recent animation trends, Seinfeld’s Bee reaches back to a more Looney Tune-style character device where talking animals and humans co-exist.



The impressive voice cast includes such Seinfeld luminaries like Patrick Warburton, Larry Miller and of course Michael Richards. Matthew Broderick is pretty funny as Barry’s sidekick, a kind of skinnier, self-motivated Costanza. Chris Rock and John Goodman are good in smaller roles; Rock as a travelling mosquito and Goodman as a Matthew Harrison Brady-like lawyer protecting big honey from the bees. Even Sting and Ray Liotta are good sports taking several jokes, that mostly only the adults would get, at their expense.



The animation is bright and colourful, the imagined world of the bees is brilliantly realized and the cartoon New York is clean and cheerful, which, although is totally different from the reality, is still a fantastically constructed set piece. Seinfeld’s humour, translates well for the younger set, and any throwback to his TV days is purely intentional given that two Seinfeld vets have their names on the script as co-authors.



Admittedly I found myself laughing more than some of the kids in the crowd, but I think it’s because there’s more nuanced comedy here than the kids may be used to, like Ratatouille in a way. But the laughs run the gambit, from slapstick to knowing references to The Graduate and Goodfellas. At the same time though this isn’t a series of adult only in jokes like, say, Shrek or Sharktale.



Bee Movie was a wonderful surprise. It isn’t a for the kids vanity project like Shark Boy and Lava Girl nor is it a winky-winky look how clever we can be while we stick it to the man film like a lot of the Dreamworks catalogue. It’s funny and lively and smart enough to know where that fine line is between being appealing to the adults as well as the kids. This film’s got some serious buzz.



Yes, I went there.