I'm a huge Seinfeld fan, in my book, it goes The Simpsons, then Seinfeld as my all-time favorite TV shows. So I was a little excited when I heard he was finally creating something new, even if it was another computer-animated family film about insects. The film does have some of that Seinfeld humor, but it also has a lot of standard, family style jokes that don't really stand out. The film is the same way, a few stand out moments, a lot of average, forgettable bits. It has the standard kid movie plot of a character figuring out who they are.

Seinfeld plays Barry B. Benson, who has just graduated from Bee college, and is about to go into the only business available to him, Honex, where they make honey. He gets only one real choice in life, which job he wants; he can stir the honey, clean the honey, take care of the drips, and a hundred other things, all revolving around honey. After he makes that decision, he's stuck with it until he dies. While it's nothing for every bee around him, for some reason he can't bring himself to make the choice. He wants to try live more first, but mostly he wants out of the hive, to see the world.

His chance comes, when some of the pollen jocks take a liking to him and decide to take him out with them. After some close calls with a tennis ball, rain and a boot, his whole world changes when he meets a human woman Vanessa, ho after the initial shock of talking to a bee, they form a fast friendship. Through her, he learns about the world conspiracy of humans stealing bee's honey for their own use. He discovers what he believes is his life's mission, to take back what is rightfully theirs; and he sues the entire human race to get the honey back. Of course there is more too it than that, and through it he discovers the true meaning of his life and begins to value his bee community.

Bee Movie has a nice message about finding yourself and your place in the world, without beating you over the head with it. What they do beat to death is the bee jokes, they're constantly throwing them at you, everything from Barry's name, to his wardrobe, to the constant honey references. It's the obvious thing to do, and instead of using them in the right situation to get the biggest laughs out of them, the use them up within 5 minutes and after that get very tired, very quickly. The Seinfeld humor, the simple observations of everyday life, are the best thing about the film, but there's not enough of it; I was disappointed in his script, the film doesn't feel fresh, uses way too many old or obvious jokes that have been seen a hundred times before.

The animation is good enough, it doesn't distract you, but doesn't blow you away either. The voice work by Jerry Seinfeld is fun, Rene Zellweger is fine as Vanessa, though I don't think she's done anything totally worthwhile since the first Bridget Jones Diary. Chris Rock does some really funny work as a crazy mosquito, Patrick Warburton and his deep voice, shows up in about his 10th animated film in as many years, and does his typical reliable thing. There's a few cameo's that work and don't, did we really need another Larry King appearance, might as well have had Jay Leno show up again, the Ray Liotta cameo was a bit more inspired, but the joke will fly over any kid's head, since they won't have a clue who he is in real life.

Bee Movie might be worth checking out if you have kids, just to see something new, and it's not too bad of a film, and a lot of the humor is aimed at the adults. But it's not very good either, if you don't have kids, and aren't a big Seinfeld fan or animation buff, I can't see a reason to bother with it. - Grade: C+

My kid laughed hysterically at the trailer for this, and I thought it didn't look too painful, so we decided to check it out. At least it had Jason Lee as Underdog, he's been one of my favorite actors since Mallrats. I never watched the cartoon as a youth, it was before my time, and way before the target audience's, so I didn't have any connection to the character yet.

It was over quickly and it honestly wasn't that bad.Granted, I was watching it with my three-year-old, who laughs if you say the word poop. But I thought it was some decent, mindless fun. Underdog, starts out as a mild-mannered beagle, who works as a drug sniffing dog. When his schnoz is revealed as faulty he is let go. The great Peter Dinklage, who has a blast playing it an 11 here, is Dr. Barsinister; he kidnaps the jobless beagle and tries to do some nasty experimentation on him. Chemicals get sprayed, computers explode and Underdog escapes; instead of dying a nasty death from getting who knows what spilled on him, he gains superpowers. Isn't that always the case?

Soon he's taken in by the lame Jim Belushi and given to his son as a replacement for his dead mother, or something like that. The boy soon learns that his dog can talk, and that he can do other neat tricks, like fly faster than the speed of sound. He urges him to become a superhero and the rest is history. He goes around saving people for a while. Then Barsinsister figures out that he's the dog that escaped and it all comes to a big happy crashing conclusion at the end, with the dog saving the day and the bad guys going to jail.

No twists, no turns, nothing new to be seen here. But what do you want, it's a kids movie? The special-effects are fun, this is the most believable talking and flying dog I've ever seen. Jason Lee has some good one-liners as Underdog. Peter Dinklage and Partick Warburton have fun hamming it up as the villains. They keep Jim Belushi safely hidden for much of the film. And the whole thing is put together fairly well.

It's no new classic and I probably won't bother buying the DVD for my kid. But nobody got hurt, and not too many braincells died in the process. An okay way to waste 75 minutes of your life.