The Bee Movie
in Movies ·
Just got back from the screening, so I figured I'd kick this thread off right now.
"What did you watch?" my buddy asked me over the phone. How am I supposed to answer that? "An animated feature"? Nah, sounds too formal... "A cartoon," I said... and then I paused for a second. Man, "cartoon" sounds so innocent, doesn't it?
That's really the core issue with animation these days. It’s not being made to be a "cartoon" intended primarily for kids. No, nowadays, "kids' movies" are stuff like Bridge to Terabithia, Golden Compass, or eventually Harry Potter. Kids want to see talking trees and flying broomsticks, not a dog chasing a cat because the cat is chasing a mouse—which was basically the essence of the cartoons from my childhood (and yours, too). Modern animated films are something else entirely. They're targeting an educated, attentive audience; people who want to actually think while they watch, rather than just sitting there, munching popcorn and laughing at random gags. Honestly, I had to work harder watching this thing than I did watching 80% of this year's live-action cinema releases. The pacing, the dialogue, the colors, the dense jokes—it all felt like something you need to come prepared for. You could follow those older genres three times easier today.
There were tons of clever bits flying through this film (animated film, cartoon, whatever...), and I think I caught about 70% of them. Actually, I bet I caught more than 80% of the audience, because the rest just flew right over my head for some reason. There were moments where you could tell a joke was clearly "in the air"—but the theater just sat there in silence. Not even grumbling or loud popcorn crunching, just pure silence, because if most people didn't feel it, they definitely felt what I felt.
The movie is incredibly fast-paced, even if it doesn't feel like it at first, and that's my biggest gripe along with it being a bit unfocused. So, this bee is trying to make a life for herself, so she flies out, pollinates flowers, gathers honey, talks to humans, ends up in a courtroom (I mean, a courtroom! in a cartoon!), saves Mother Nature's entire flora, goes back to gathering honey, and so on and so on, endlessly.
Roger Ebert also drew some (conditional) parallels between the bee's worldview and Marxism, which is actually pretty easy to spot once you look for it, and it's pretty interesting.
Something Ebert didn't mention, which I find even more fascinating, is that the two biggest animated hits this year both focus on communication between an animal protagonist and their human friend—basically their anchor in the world. Why is this happening now, and why is Hollywood pumping out so many political films this year? It's certainly not a trivial question you can just brush off, but it's a hell of an interesting phenomenon.
Even when I compare it to Ratatouille, I have to admit Ratatouille left a much bigger impression on me. Rotten Tomatoes gave The Bee Movie a measly 53%, while Juhu-h got something like 96%. Personally, I'd be a bit gentler and give our flying hero a solid 7 or 8/10. The animation is gorgeous and there are great jokes (Chris Rock absolutely shines, and as one American critic noted, it's about time he got his own animated movie), but I still can't get past how overstuffed and unfocused it feels.
Sorry, I started rambling at the end because I remembered nobody actually reads these long posts anyway, and I don't want to spend days typing this out, so I'll stop here.
"What did you watch?" my buddy asked me over the phone. How am I supposed to answer that? "An animated feature"? Nah, sounds too formal... "A cartoon," I said... and then I paused for a second. Man, "cartoon" sounds so innocent, doesn't it?
That's really the core issue with animation these days. It’s not being made to be a "cartoon" intended primarily for kids. No, nowadays, "kids' movies" are stuff like Bridge to Terabithia, Golden Compass, or eventually Harry Potter. Kids want to see talking trees and flying broomsticks, not a dog chasing a cat because the cat is chasing a mouse—which was basically the essence of the cartoons from my childhood (and yours, too). Modern animated films are something else entirely. They're targeting an educated, attentive audience; people who want to actually think while they watch, rather than just sitting there, munching popcorn and laughing at random gags. Honestly, I had to work harder watching this thing than I did watching 80% of this year's live-action cinema releases. The pacing, the dialogue, the colors, the dense jokes—it all felt like something you need to come prepared for. You could follow those older genres three times easier today.
There were tons of clever bits flying through this film (animated film, cartoon, whatever...), and I think I caught about 70% of them. Actually, I bet I caught more than 80% of the audience, because the rest just flew right over my head for some reason. There were moments where you could tell a joke was clearly "in the air"—but the theater just sat there in silence. Not even grumbling or loud popcorn crunching, just pure silence, because if most people didn't feel it, they definitely felt what I felt.
The movie is incredibly fast-paced, even if it doesn't feel like it at first, and that's my biggest gripe along with it being a bit unfocused. So, this bee is trying to make a life for herself, so she flies out, pollinates flowers, gathers honey, talks to humans, ends up in a courtroom (I mean, a courtroom! in a cartoon!), saves Mother Nature's entire flora, goes back to gathering honey, and so on and so on, endlessly.
Roger Ebert also drew some (conditional) parallels between the bee's worldview and Marxism, which is actually pretty easy to spot once you look for it, and it's pretty interesting.
Something Ebert didn't mention, which I find even more fascinating, is that the two biggest animated hits this year both focus on communication between an animal protagonist and their human friend—basically their anchor in the world. Why is this happening now, and why is Hollywood pumping out so many political films this year? It's certainly not a trivial question you can just brush off, but it's a hell of an interesting phenomenon.
Even when I compare it to Ratatouille, I have to admit Ratatouille left a much bigger impression on me. Rotten Tomatoes gave The Bee Movie a measly 53%, while Juhu-h got something like 96%. Personally, I'd be a bit gentler and give our flying hero a solid 7 or 8/10. The animation is gorgeous and there are great jokes (Chris Rock absolutely shines, and as one American critic noted, it's about time he got his own animated movie), but I still can't get past how overstuffed and unfocused it feels.
Sorry, I started rambling at the end because I remembered nobody actually reads these long posts anyway, and I don't want to spend days typing this out, so I'll stop here.