Bee flat

Cafe Society
1

Bee movie thread

Didn’t like:

  • Renewed focus on that stupid urban legends that aviation experts don’t think that (bumble)bees can fly.

  • The message that a bees’ life is as valuable as a humans. I don’t mind them making the bees anthropomorphic, and thus self-conscious etc. But I do mind the focus on our view of bees, and making a point out of the crazy insectophilic woman turning out to be right.

  • When the fields instantly turned green after being pollinated.
    Liked:

  • The scene where Seinfelds’ parents are complaining, and he is sinking in the water, in an homage to the graduate.
    (I’m sure there is a previous thread about it, but the SDMB function is annoyingly useless. :mad: )

2

The only one I can find is This Bee Movie trainwreck is delicious.

Didn’t see it, so I can’t really comment. Except to say I had no desire to see it.

3

I saw it recently. A terminally medioce film that made no sense ever on its own premise. Why exactly were the flowers in Pasadena able to repopulate the world? How did random pollen from, say, a rose work to bring, say, apples back? What exactly did Seinfeld think would happen when the bees stopped pollenating? What happend to Chris Rock (I suspect most of his role was left on the cutting room floor)?Compared to any of a dozen animated films in the past few years, this is one of the weakest.

4

It was funny and colourful.

That’s about all I can say. It was just a weird idea that didn’t make a lot of sense.

5

I thought it was a cute movie.

6

In the grand scheme of things, I’d say that might be open to debate.

And, yes, I saw the movie. It wasn’t great, but it was fun to watch at home on a hot summer afternoon with the AC turned up.

7

In that thread, there was a bunch of speculation about whether Bee Movie was going to be a flop or not.

With a budget of about $150 million, and domestic gross of $126 million and change…well, that’s not too good, is it?

8

Note that the domestic gross is not necessarily a good indicator of whether a movie is profitable. I read somewhere that it can be as little as 20% of a movie’s revenues with foreign distribution, product placement, DVD sales, broadcast television rights, cable and satellite rights, etc. making up the rest. I think one of the recent James Bond films made back most of its production costs only on product placement (but then it’s especially lucrative on Bond films).

So Bee Movie might have been profitable even if the domestic gross was “only” $126 million.

9

Animation in particular is more successful as a DVD release than at the Box Office. A lot of parents rent or buy DVDs for their kids more often than they will take them to the cinema.

It’s quite possible that over the next year or two Bee Movie will make twice its budget back. But it won’t be the kind of stats that will be made public, or used when referred as a “success” or “failure”.