Bee Movie

The "Insect Politics" speech 

was something that David Cronenberg 

came up with from his days as an entomologist. 

He was fascinated by insect societies, 

the division of labor, and the caste structure 

therein, yet they are 

VERY MUCH not-Human.

Mel Brooks didn't want people to know he was 

a producer for the film, because he thought people 

wouldn't take it seriously 

if they knew he was involved. 

When people DID find out, 

he decided to make the most of it 

by handing out deely boppers 

at the premiere.

Mark Kermode - Bee Movie

"....Several problems with it 

and they goes something like this :

Firstly, it has no proper sense of its anthropomorphism --

The way in which you do movies 

about animals talking to each other is, 

The Animals talk to each other, okay, 

you don't then cross over 

the species boundary, and have 

The Animals then talking to The Humans 

and The Gag is, 'The Animals talk --'

Right -- when we're in The Hive 

with all The Animals talking 

to each other, it's fine 

We're in Animal World, 

We're in Fantasy World, 

but there's a plot Point here, 

which is that He meets A Woman 

then He starts talking to her 

and she goes "Blimey! A Talking Bee!" 

So The Gag isn't that 

‘Bees live their life in relation to --

The Gag is that 

‘All bees actually talk —’

which means that none
of the rest of movie 

makes any sense because

Bees don't wear hats, 

Bees don't fly Planes,
Bees don't -- don't -- 

Bees don't -- y'know -- drive cars...
None of these things happen 

so you've trodden over The Line, 

you've broken The Unwritten Rule 

of 'You can do this, you can't do that --'

It's like 'No, you can't --' 

It's like -- 

"....It's made up.

It's not True 

Work it out."

...No, There are Rules, that you --

That doesn't work if you do that, 

in the same way as it doesn't work 

in Ocean's Thirteen, when 

Julia Roberts manages to get into a club 

because she looks like Julia Roberts, 

but nobody says 'Yeah, but, 

he looks like Brad Pit and 

he looks like George Clooney 

and that other guy looks like Casey Affleck 

and anyway there's a whole 

movie carrying on around it -- '

“It doesn't. You — 

No, sorry there's ways 

of doing anthropomorphism 

and that ain't one of them, 

Number one --

Number two, 

It's A Comedy about Lawyers; 

It's A Comedy in which
A Bee sues The Human race, right? 

Very funny for the...
you know, the grown ups 

and all the rest of it -- Kids :

"What.....? 'Sue', what does 'Sue', mean?
I don't know -- 

Isn't Sue you know, A Boy Called Sue …?

“…because they'll go straight away with 

that Johnny Cash reference weren't they?”

Well they're more likely to do that 

than say “Oh yes, I understand 

it's a legal term, so —

I don't think so 

Point number two —

“They're more likely 

to get the legal term

than they are the 

Johnny Cash reference --

Point number three : the whole thing about 

'I don't want to be A Drone --' 

is ripped off of ANTZ, which in itself 

was kind of ripped off of A Bug's Life 

and that, you know that's all been done before 

Point number four : The Jokes aren't 

as funny as they ought to be; that's not to say that I didn't laugh a few times but when I did laugh, I laughed as an adult laughing at adult humor -- not adult in the...  in the you know in the Jimmy Carr sense, but as in the --

So it's almost like you gone through the Looking Glass, the cartoon is no longer being made for the kids audience it's being made as a sort of you know I want to make gags that will make sense to the older audience and I've kind of completely bypassed the kids oh bother you know what I've got to do something for the kids let's do it as a cartoon --

And this all kind of came into Focus for me when I saw that trailer and the trailer was the gag is he Jerry sign but dressed up as a Bee he can't do the dressing up as a Bee so Steven Spielberg says and incidentally not very convincing Steven Spielberg may be a director but boy he can't act his way out a paper bag says why don't you just do it as a cartoon and you know what there's a terrible sense of that there's a terrible sense of that's what they've done they've just gone why not do it as a cartoon --

It's not terrible but it ain't a Kids film --

It's not a proper Kids film, 

because if it is a proper Kids film, 

it doesn't do --

the anthropomorphism thing 

doesn't work, the animation 

should be funny, the story 

should be better and the jokes
should be better and that --
none of those are True.