Buzz Uneven for Bee Movie

Jerry Seinfeld uses “every stupid bee joke that he and his cronies could cook up” in Bee Movie, Joe Morgenstern of the Wall Street Journal says, and USA Today's Claudia Puig calls the animated feature “so unfunny it almost stings.” But Newsday finds Barry B. Benson’s quest to escape 9-to-5 hive drudgery by suing humanity “infectiously amusing.”

It’s not unpleasant to sit through, concludes the Washington Post, but neither is it “abuzz with hilarity.” Like Seinfeld’s TV show, Rolling Stone's Peter Travers notes, the movie is “at its relaxed best, when it's about, well, nothing.” But when it drifts into moral and ecological lessons, well, that buzzing sound you hear may actually be snoring. (More movie review stories.)