Bee Movie
Posted on March 10, 2008 at 8:00 am
Jerry Seinfeld will always be remembered for creating a brilliant and beloved television show about…nothing. His unbreakable rule was “no learning, no hugging.” Popular sitcoms had always been about learning and hugging and “very special episodes.” But Seinfeld created four intensely self-absorbed characters and if we did not exactly care about them, we were captivated by them. Now, he and some of the “Seinfeld” show writers have created an animated movie aimed at children. There is some hugging and learning involved but it is still as close to being about nothing as it can be.
Charlie Bartlett (Anton Yelchin) has been kicked out of so many posh prep schools that the only thing left to try is the local public school. At first, he shows up wearing his prep school blazer and carrying an attaché case, but he soon learns — around the time that a Mohawk-haired bully gives him a swirly — that this is not the way to fit in. And it only takes him a little bit longer to discover that he has what it takes to become truly popular: the willingness to listen to kids and the access to a wide range of prescription psychotropic drugs.
This pea-brained vanity production does not have the energy to remember from one scene to the next what it is about or why it is on screen. It is attention-deficit film-making. Famous-for-being-famous Paris Hilton is not only the star, but also the producer of the film, and it seems to have been entirely generated by whatever she thought would be fun to do in front of a camera, with no thought whatsoever to the misery it would inflict on those who might watch it.
“Family is a 24-7 reality check,” explains one of the parade of nightmare relatives. “This is one hell of a family,” says another. These two statements pretty much summarize the movie. And that’s the good news.