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“Bee Movie may not have the dazzling animation of Pixar’s recent Ratatouille,” said Sight & Sound magazine, “but in some ways it has even more charm.”

The plot here couldn’t be simpler: a bumbling bee (voiced by US comedian Jerry Seinfeld, who also wrote the script) takes humanity to court for stealing honey.

The hero is something of an unpretentious, regular, everyday guy, recently graduated from college and freshly disillusioned with the prospect of having just one career choice: the making of honey.

As he ventures outside the hive for the first time, he breaks one of the bee world’s cardinal rules by talking to a human being, New York florist Vanessa (Renée Zellweger).

The bee belatedly comes to realise that people effectively steal the commodity he will spend his entire life making: hence the lawsuit.

“This DreamWorks film is not the sliced-bread marvel it has spent an enormous amount of money pretending to be,” said James Christopher in The Times. “But it must be said that Seinfeld’s script is a thing of wonder.”

Hollywood animation, of course, has long been in the habit of not only bewitching children with their feature-length cartoons but also entertaining adults as well.

Bee Movie, however, despite being created by one of America’s most successful stand-up comedians, was ultimately judged to be a little too geared for kids.

But Peter Bradshaw of the Guardian came out of the film buzzing, declaring, “What a treat to see a comedy that starts funny, is funny in the middle, and ends funny.”

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Tags: animation, Bee Movie, comedy, family, Jerry Seinfeld, Matthew Broderick, On Demand, Renée Zellweger, reviews

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