Bee Movie

I saw Bee Movie yesterday and I liked it. The critics hated this movie, saying it wasn’t funny, that the story was stupid and so forth. Well, I’m glad I never bother to read a review until after I see a film.

Bee Movie has two very good messages. The first is that if you do your job well, no matter how small the job is, it can make a big difference. This lesson is repeated throughout the film, which shows us the inner workings of a bee hive, where thousands work at very small jobs, ultimately producing a beautiful product – honey.

The second lesson is about the importance of honest work for bringing meaning to one’s life. The story of the movie is how Barry B. Benson, a bee with Jerry Seinfeld’s voice, sues the human race for stealing honey from bees. Benson wins and humans are no longer allowed to take the honey. The bee population stops making honey. All the bees initially are happy with their new life of leisure. But soon, the bees begin to miss their work. More importantly, all the flowers in the world begin to die because the cessation of honey production means the bees are no longer pollinating plants. At the end of the movie, the bees decide to let humans have their honey, bringing important purpose back to their lives, and giving them a reason to fly about from plant to plant, bringing back the process of pollination. The bees are happier, all the world’s plants come back to life, and humans can once again enjoy honey.

The real message in the movie is that your work is important, even if it seems unimportant. While most of us think we would love a life of leisure, this film tells us that we really need to be doing something that contributes to the world.

Bee Movie is not a great movie, but I liked the message and I found much of it to be very clever. I also found it funny, particularly a line from a mosquito about being well suited to be a lawyer given that he already was a blood sucking parasite. And at 90 minutes, the story was just as long as it needed to be(e).