Populuxe is a voice I trust on many issues. So when he says Dreamwork’s Bee Movie is at best an F-movie, AKA ‘wait till DVD’ experience, I listen.
What was wrong with it? In short, the story. First there was the
bee/human zoophilia sub-plot. Then there was the 30 minute court drama
– yes, people, Jerry Seinfeld wrote a court drama for kids. It was at
this point in the movie that everyone stopped paying attention and all
of the kids simultaneously got restless. We almost had a kid rebellion
in the theater. What wasn’t totally stupid was borrow from A Bug’s Life
where it was done much better. The whole bee talking to people/living
as a person thing is just so totally out of context that the movie just
completely shattered the suspension of disbelief, and yet oddly,
replaces it with a new disbelief about how this movie even got made
this way.
He also gets in a few digs at Sparky "foam my house" Katzenberg, which always makes my day.
what I think is really pathetic is that Dreamworks can’t seem to make a
movie without committing violence on some classic Disney character,
which shows two things: a) Jeffrey Katzenberg can’t let a grudge go.
Eisner is a distant memory and he’s still got to pick a bone. And b)
Dreamworks has no iconic characters of their own to make fun of so they
have to use Disney’s. Its basically an admittance that what they make
are flash in the pan irrelevant movies. Its sad.
Bee Movie had no family film competition at the box office, so it managed to make $39 million. And yet, we have nothing animated from Disney this holiday season. (Enchanted is mostly live-action so it doesn’t count). Too bad since the competition is really so weak. (Read)
It just looks bad. Even my kids don’t want to see it, and I wanted to take them (out of curiosity and boredom).
I think it would have been better if they went with that live action costume thing they did in the commercials.
Once upon a time, I had been interested in seeing it. This weekend, I couldn’t remember why, but went anyway.
It wasn’t bad, but it certainly wasn’t good either. And that’s been my experience with Dreamworks Animated films in general.
And yes, Katz, needs to let go of his obsession with Disney. It got old years ago.
Mark
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