Bee Movie trailer
DreamWorks animated movie comes out November 2nd
Jerry Seinfeld loses the self-referentiality for the first official Bee Movie trailer.
(Source: movies.aol.com)
Obviously I've been pretty up-and-down with DreamWorks Animation's upcoming Bee Movie: some days I think this could be a really cool movie, other days I wonder whether I can handle 90 minutes of wall-to-wall Jerry Seinfeld (I admit, I'm not a fan). Right now, I'm giving this flick the benefit of the doubt, and hope this film will live up to its promise so far.
The first two teaser trailers were cool in that they took us "behind the scenes," showing Jerry getting bashed about trying to make a live-action animated flick (dig the E.T. riff in the 2nd trailer).
For this latest spot (look down the page and click Trailer No. 3 to watch it in glorious Quicktime), we get a little more of Bee Movie's plot: Barry B. Benson (Seinfeld), a recent college grad, realizes that he is going to spend the rest of his life making honey for Honex, the company that owns his hive. Wanting more from his existence, he decides to explore the outside world, eventually meeting up with the obligatory love interest (voiced by Renée Zellweger). Hijinks ensue.
Overall, this trailer is a bit of hit-and-miss. The animation rocks, and the majority of the gags are good, whether it's insects bonding on a car windshield ("Him? Oh, he actually is dead.") or Seinfeld discovering glass windows and tennis the hard way. On the other hand, the "Hive-o" joke lacked a certain something . . . like the funny.
I'm also debating whether Bee Movie will suffer from the dreaded disease known as "Trailer-itis," where desperate editors, trying to sell a hunk o' junk to moviegoers, cram all the funniest bits into the trailer. I doubt this is the case here (if nothing else, Seinfeld knows how to write plenty of gag lines), but it is a problem, especially for comedies.
This brings me to my other potential problem with this flick: can Seinfeld write for kids? So far, he's played to an adult audience that can appreciate his schtick, can he bring that down (I hope not dumb it down: kids deserve better than that) for children without coming off as patronizing, or will half this movie sail over kids' heads?
One big plus for Bee Movie is that the voice cast is solid. I still like Chris Rock, despite the fact that his last couple of movies were pure crap, and you really can't go wrong with character talent like John Goodman, Matthew Broderick, Eddie Izzard, Alan Arkin, Patrick Warburton, Kathy Bates and Rip Torn.
Okay, okay, you can go seriously wrong with Patrick Warburton (did anybody like Happily N'Ever After?), but he always does good work, and at least the rest of the cast has better taste in projects, or aren't as desperate to make their car payments.
Bee Movie opens November 2nd.
Fun Fact: Most bees in a hive are female: the fertile queen bee and the sterile worker bees. The only male bees in a colony are the drones, there only to fertilize the queen; they never leave the hive.
