Funny never really goes out of style; it just takes on different (sometimes unpleasant) avatars. Jerry Seinfeld wanted to go out at number one and he did just that when he ended his critically acclaimed sitcom, Seinfeld.
Of course, all of this was a very long time ago when Internet penetration was nowhere near as high as it is today and fanboys (and girls) with blogs and an opinion weren't as rife as they are today. Would Seinfeld have been the cultural landmark today that it was then? Probably.
Popular as he might have been in his heyday, it wasn't wrong of skeptics to wonder whether the man who managed to trap lightning in a bottle once would be able to achieve anywhere near that level of success again. Especially since the other three main cast members of Seinfeld had been largely unsuccessful at getting a respectable second innings in mainstream media in the years following the end of the television sitcom (Julia Louis-Dreyfus recently broke the Seinfeld curse with her starring role in a new sitcom last year).
So when it was announced that Jerry Seinfeld was 'coming back' with a feature film, and an animated one at that, raised eyebrows, shaken heads and under-the-breath mutterings about the Seinfeld curse might have been the norm rather than the exception.
Still it is clear now that the man who managed to be busy during his tenure away from the mainstream spotlight knew what he was doing. Even if he was about to put his might behind a movie that is ostensibly about a bee named Barry B Benson who breaks a cardinal bee rule by talking to a human (Renée Zellweger), learns that they profit from the honey that bees work so hard to produce, and decides to sue them.
Except that American studios and the storytellers they hire have an exceptional grasp of packaged storytelling and an amazing ability to make seemingly alien worlds (the beehive in this case) relatable to mass audiences.
While Pixar does warm and cuddly like nobody else, other animation studios (like Dreamworks Animation for this film) take a more adult-aware approach to their storytelling. So of course there's still the cute(ish) character of the lead bee voiced by Jerry Seinfeld and an impressive supporting cast that includes Matthew Broderick, Chris Rock, Kathy Bates and John Goodman with the added bonus of a couple of ironic cameos by the likes of talk show host Larry King, musician Sting and actor Ray Liotta. Though the pacing is leisurely, there is enough in the world unveiled onscreen to keep your eyes interested.
The humour is often subtle and interspersed with playful digs at industry insiders like John Travolta and the aforementioned guest stars. The animation is on par with previous Dreamworks efforts and the precision-based universe inside the hive is juxtaposed very effectively with the chaos in the rest of the world to help drive home points about the nature of the film's primary characters.
Each scene is beautifully rendered in colours that make everything on screen look good enough to eat. There are some inspired music choices and little Barry comes across as very likeable, for a bee.
If there is a shortcoming in this film, it is the lack of sufficient dramatic tension. In that sense it mirrors an average episode of Seinfeld where stuff happened but it was never as wildly dramatic as filmed entertainment normally feels the need to be. The laidback tone of the lead character's voice is also the tone of the film. The only real difference (or perhaps it is the greatest similarity with the sitcom) is that the movie leaves us with a moral -- with everything you do, win or lose, there are repercussions. Which is not the worst moral for kids to take away from their entertainment.
In these dying days of another year, when a lot of the hard work has been done, this might be just the sort of pressure-free entertainment that could be good for you.
Rediff Rating: