And the greatest irony is that if anyone could find humor in the painfully desperate promotion of this surefire flop, it’s Seinfeld himself.
This film was never more interesting than when it was just “an animated movie about a bee voiced by Jerry Seinfeld”. Everything else released after that promotion wise makes the movie seem more and more ignorable. Nobody asked for this movie, nothing in the trailer is either elucidating or intriguing, it’s just a wholly bewildering project.
It’s not that it just seems like a bad movie. Because you can at least understand how obvious stinkers came to be - they have some sort of “interesting” idea behind them. For example if Bee Movie was a live action movie about Seinfeld being transformed into a bee by an witch to teach him a lesson - that’s something. We’d get why somebody somewhere might have thought that that was a good idea. But this feels like somebody trying to give us the hard sell on Thanksgiving-themed stickers.
While I agree this probably will not be the best film ever released, I don’t agree with your assessment of it being a surefire flop- aren’t movies of this type almost always huge hits, financially speaking?
Jerry also wrote the film- he came up with the punny title during a lunch meeting with Spielberg and it grew from there. The basic plot sounds like something only he could come up with- a bee plans to sue the humans who take his honey and sell it without compensating the bees. Not even Pixar could think up something as wacky.
Wow…that’s what I get for assuming everyone thinks like me. At least everyone I’ve spoken to in person about this movie had the same reaction as I did. FWIW, I love animated movies, and loved Toy Story, Madagascar, and Cars. It just looks like Bee Movie has nothing going for it (including the title - I hate it).
I was ignorant until this moment about the suing angle, but I KNEW this was the whole reason this movie got made. B Movie … Bee Movie. Yuk, yuk, yuk. :rolleyes:
I think it looks uninteresting.
I mean we already had Antz and Bugs Life.
And while Jerry is a funny comediene and can tell a funny story I never found him to be a very good comedic actor.
And what was with those little Bee Movie promos during The Office? Those were painfully unfunny. I started skipping over them with my Tivo.
The only reason I even had the slightest interest in this movie was the fact that Eddie Izzard appeared to be involved, and I sort of worship the ground he walks on. He makes a split-second cameo in the trailer(s) as the director. When I learned that this was in fact just some kind of cameo and that he wasn’t actually involved in the project, I abandoned any interest. Now it just looks like another pathetic vehicle for a couple of big name stars to lend a hand to another unfunny Jerry Seinfeld ego trip. I take Izzard’s non-involvment to be an indicator of avoidance, at least on my part. That, and the fact that if the trailer doesn’t even make me laugh, then the movie’s probably awful.
If by “wacky” you mean “stupid”, then I’m totally on board.
Nothing I’ve seen from the film makes it look like anything but a tedious Antz retread, and given that Dreamworks is responsible for the thoroughly detestable Shrek series, I don’t feel like I’ll be missing one thing (especially given how many other terrific movies are out there I still haven’t seen).
It’s been getting good buzzzzz (by people who’ve actually, you know, seen it). I’ll let you all know how it is after I see it. I’m not into Seinfeld, I’ve never seen even one episode of his TV show, but I’ll see this.
While just about any piece of crappy animation (esp. if it’s Disney) can make money, I think the issue concerning this film once the smoke settles is whether it made as much money as expected.
I take some of the hype as an attempt to appeal to adults. (E.g., long format ads during “The Office”.) If you can get adults to see an animated film, you are printing money.
But the huge superfluous amount of promotion for this film is bizarre. One has to wonder what is going on. No film of this type, regardless of quality, is worth this amount of advertising money.
I wonder if Seinfeld knows it’s a dud and doesn’t want to join in the “Seinfeld Curse”. (Although the current JLD show is technically still alive.) So, hype, hype, hype. Throw money at it. Hope the box office turns out not bad. Declare victory.
As for me, the ads have completely turned me off. My interest in the film has gone down the toilet, thru the sewers and is halfway to the ocean.
Those pseudo-documentary ads that they’ve been running made me swear I wouldn’t see this movie even under threat of torture (which I think would be redundant anyway).
Hey, I’m with you on Antz but I’d hardly call Shrek detestable. I thought a lot of the sendups in Shrek were fairly clever. Steve Carrell’s frantic voicing of Hammy in Over The Hedge had me in stitches too. I wouldn’t even call myself a big fan of Steve Carrell’s, but his casting in that part was perfect. The scene with Hammy chasing the laser pointer had me laughing until I cried. But then, I was interested enough to see both of those Dreamworks films based on the trailers showing some comedic promise … can’t say the same for Bee Movie. It’s obviously going to be full of Seinfeld’s esoteric humor that has you wondering whether you’re laughing at a punchline or at a double-take.
