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Barry B. Benson is a bee about to begin his bag for the beloved and bountiful bee business of Honex located, of course, in his hive. But, Barry is a bee whose grasp exceeds his reach, daring to defy the expectations of his worker caste by leaving the hive with the Pollen Jocks, those Top Gun stingers whose job it is to spread the seed. While the world at large is both wonderous and wonderful, Benson discovers the true horror of humanity: we eat their honey. Shocked and dismayed, Barry finds a friend in human florist Vanessa Blume, and the two team up to sue and take down the honey industry but their success has an unintended impact on the rest of the world.

Much like the last trainwreckish episode of Jerry Seinfeld’s Seinfeld, I never expected Bee Movie to go where it went. Trailers inspired thoughts of a hero worship pic where Barry would learn to be warrior of some kind, but instead we’re given an insectified version of Boston Legal with a dire warning of bee extinction that had its roots planted only a couple of years ago. The result? Mediocrity. Each of the cast does okay by their roles, but John Goodman and Patrick Warburton are the only two to really effect that powerful, vocally-animated performance that you expect out of a visually-animated movie; Warburton’s problem is that he recalls every angry emotion he’s spewed on Seth MacFarlane’s Family Guy to greater effect. The rest you either don’t notice or see them only as their reality counterparts, a la Jerry Seinfeld as Barry and Rene Zellwegger as Vanessa.

The animation is serviceable, but not miraculous or breathtaking. We’ve seen the same colors and palette in many movies since Monsters, Inc and by now, it’s a well-used pencil; there’s no one piece of animation that just screams “Technical Achievement!” That lack of innovation only further exposes the cast and story, the latter of which, depending on your personal morals, may cross uncomfortable boundaries for the younger set. For example, at one point when Vanessa asks Barry how they’re going to get over environmental devastation, Barry mentions, offhandedly and in method detail, mutual suicide. Subtly-cued adult humor threaded throughout movies targeted at kiddoes is certainly nothing new in the modern age, but the question is begged: why, how far, and how often, must that innocence be lost?

Given that the movie is average at almost every corner, there’s no real reason to reach for the two-disc special edition. There are a host of special features, most notably a series of shorts that you saw plastered all over NBC in late 2007 but probably didn’t laugh at; the only one that inspired a chuckle was Ray Liotta in the bathroom dressed up as a fly. The rest are the standard specials: commentary, deleted scenes and a variety of thankfully ditched alternate endings that see Vanessa and Barry pairing up in an intimate relationship.

Bee Movie will likely satisfy the palette of any youngster but it never rises above anything ordinary; it’s mildly sweet with a dash of bitter and not of a vintage to make any pooh bear go crazy.

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