Over the weekend, we took the girls to see Jerry Seinfeld's opus, Bee Movie. It was bright and funny and, despite almost everything I read about it, enjoyable. The critics I read all seemed to say the same thing, "Oh sure, you'll laugh and the jokes are funny. . . but . . ." and then they'd go on to critique something or other. One reviewer from NPR thought the whole movie was a veiled metaphor for Seinfeld himself. The bees, like Jerry at the end of his sitcom, stop working and then entire world turns gray and dead. Then they start working again and everyone is happy. The reviewer (Bob Mondello, I think) saw the movie as a testament to Seinfeld's ego. Whatever.
I think people either wanted more from Seinfeld's return to mainstream, mass media entertainment or they were just set on disliking whatever he ended up finally doing. Whatever it is, as far as I'm concerned, they could have just said, "Oh sure, you'll laugh and the jokes are funny" and left it at that. It's not as good as Ratatouie but still loads better than Shrek 3, Happily Never After, Barnyard, The Wild, and most of the other computer generated junk that's been produced in the last several years.
Other things to recommend Bee Movie: it features the best performance Matthew Broderick has given in years, it's got Patrick Warburton essentially playing a very intense version of his sitcom character Puddy, John Goodman is hilarious as the honey industry lawyer, and it ends with a cover of George Harrison's Here Comes the Sun which is one of my favorite songs of all time.
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