When Jerry Seinfeld Had a ‘Bee Movie’ in His Bonnet

How do you follow up one of the most successful sitcoms of all time? However you want.

Welcome to And the Quest for Pop Culture, where I explore various movies, TV shows, books, and comics. Looking for a different topic or original fiction? Check out the navigation page.

---

Jerry Seinfeld continues to perform stand-up comedy at 71 years old, and he’s still got it.

My sister and I were fortunate enough to see him when he came to Richmond, Virginia, last week. The act covered plenty of territory—phones, AI, family vacations, coffee, cemeteries, marriage, kitchen sponges, and more. And it was all fresh and funny. I don’t know exactly how new these bits were, but none of it was on Seinfeld. He’s not coasting on the greatest hits. On the contrary, the act made it clear that a 21st-century Seinfeld would have had no shortage of good material.

I might have used this as a springboard to discuss Seinfeld, but I already did that last year.

What Was the Deal with ‘Seinfeld’?

If Seinfeld taught me anything, it’s not to double-dip. I will instead follow up that post in the manner that Jerry followed up Seinfeld.

So, Bee Movie was a weird one, wasn’t it?

Seinfeld wrote and produced the 2007 Dreamworks animated movie and voiced its lead character, Barry B. Benson, who, much like his initials, is a bee.

Bee Movie opens as Barry is graduating from college and preparing to enter the working world, or rather, the part of the hive where work happens, which is most of it. He must choose a job, and he must stick with that same job for the rest of his life. The prospect of never-ending monotony stirs up some feelings.

Barry, having spent his entire existence within the hive, yearns to see the outside world before he commits to the tedium. He seizes an opportunity to do just that, bringing him into contact with a kindly florist, Vanessa (Renée Zellweger). She saves his life, so he breaks the rules and speaks to her, kicking off an unorthodox interspecies friendship.

At this point, Bee Movie is a perfectly decent family film that combines a healthy sense of whimsy with the standard formula. It takes us into a new world—a hive full of anthropomorphized bees—and introduces us to a young protagonist who wants more out of life and isn’t willing to accept society’s usual restrictions.

The setup isn’t all that different from The Little Mermaid’s, just with puns instead of classic Broadway-style songs. Not exactly an upgrade, but it’s playful and amusing enough.

A cartoon should be a natural fit for Seinfeld. After all, he often brought a cartoonish sensibility to the sitcom. This became even more evident in the show’s final two seasons, after co-creator Larry David left and was no longer balancing things out.

Case in point:

It’s not surprising that Seinfeld went on to make an animated movie. Nevertheless, Bee Movie was new territory for him. He simply hadn’t mastered this domain to the extent that he had stand-up and sitcoms, so there were bound to be some rough edges and oddities.

The relationship at the center of the movie certainly qualifies as an oddity.

Vanessa gives off some April O’Neil vibes. Instead of befriending four sewer-dwelling turtles, she befriends one garrulous bee, which raises the question of where her actual friends are. She has a boyfriend, Ken (Patrick Warburton), but it’s clearly not much of a relationship if a bee can derail it.

Barry, Vanessa, and Ken form a distinctive triangle, to say the least. And on this matter, it’s best to say the least. A bee falling for a human woman is pure silliness, and thankfully, the movie lets the idea just sit there at the level of silliness.

Bee Movie begins to settle into a comfortable, entertaining rhythm, complete with a spoof of The Graduate, but then it escalates. In doing so, it loses its sense of scale.

Barry discovers that humans have been stealing honey, as well as holding countless bees in captivity to produce this honey. So, he decides to sue the human race, which is a thing a bee can do in this world. This coming-of-age story pivots into a courtroom comedy. Then, after the bees’ victory results in an excess of honey and a dearth of pollination, it switches gears again into a tale of environmental collapse (but one with a nearly instantaneous recovery).

Basically, by playing hooky from the hive, Barry sets off a chain of events that almost destroys the world. Let that be a lesson, kids. Stay in your hive! Follow the rules! Accept those tedious jobs!

That’s probably not what the movie was going for. Everything works out in the end, after all. But perhaps a smaller scale would have resulted in a better movie—the antics of a talking bee trying to navigate the human world and learning to thrive among bees and people alike. That was all it needed to be.

Though it goes off-course, the movie still has its charms, and that’s because everyone involved seems to be having fun with this thing. Infectious enthusiasm and shameless silliness carry the day.

At this point in his career, following previous massive success, Jerry Seinfeld could have made whatever movie he wanted to. He didn’t need to make any movie whatsoever. You make nine years of Seinfeld, you’re set for life.

But Bee Movie is the movie Seinfeld wanted to make. Something about this concept excited him enough to see the project through, and that excitement gives the movie a special spark of unhinged absurdity. Seinfeld and his writing team confidently embrace the ridiculous while focusing on topics that genuinely interest him: comedians (Chris Rock voices a mosquito), cars (the bees drive bee cars throughout the hive, and Barry gets sucked into a people car’s engine at one point), and coffee (Vanessa and Barry bond while drinking coffee, though Barry, not wanting to remain awake for the rest of his life, is unable to finish his cup).

The movie invites everyone to join in on the fun, and it’s assembled quite a cast, which also includes Kathy Bates, Matthew Broderick, John Goodman, Barry Levinson, Megan Mullally, Michael Richards, and Oprah Winfrey—plus Larry King, Ray Liotta, and Sting all voicing themselves (or a bee version of himself in King’s case). There’s even a Winnie the Pooh cameo.

None of this elevates Bee Movie to a classic or anything. It’s much more a B- movie than a B+ movie. But I’ll take a flawed movie that people truly wanted to make over a corporate cash-grab assignment any day.

Perhaps this also explains the success of Seinfeld’s current stand-up act. He doesn’t need to still be performing. Again, the man is 71. But he clearly enjoys it and gives it his full effort.

Enjoying what you create. That’s gold, Jerry. Gold!