Bee Movie (2007) Review

rating: ****

the story: A bee discovers that humans use honey.

review: The thing about Bee Movie is that it’s an animated movie that’s probably better appreciated by adults than by kids. It’s kind of the whole point.

For one thing, it’s probably going to end up the only time Jerry Seinfeld does an actual attempt at telling a story, rather than what he did for nine seasons of Seinfeld, “a show about nothing,” in which he poked fun at everyday foibles with no real concern whether he acting or sort of just waiting to deliver his stand-up material around a given cast of characters. I mean, I loved it, but no one, including Seinfeld himself, was ever going to argue that Seinfeld made any kind of effort to be an actor.

A lot of Bee Movie is a collection of gag material, too, but it ends up being an actual story, with a point an’ everything, and not just a point but a very good one. Seinfeld’s bee goes to trial to prevent humans from stealing honey. And this leads to bees no longer producing as much honey. And not so much pollinating. And suddenly it gets real.

It’s a morality tale. It’s about failing to see the interconnectedness of things, how in trying to rip one thing apart from another, it ends up being like that loose thread that unravels the whole sweater. This has huge applications for a modern world that no longer understands how much unraveling is really being done, that can’t distinguish between distinctions being made and losing the sweater in the process.

And it’s got Patrick Warburton! I don’t know, I’m always a sucker for the guy, ever since discovering him in Dave’s World. And John Goodman, making full use of his booming voice. Renee Zellweger kind of recedes into the animation (I think even she learned years later that her eyes are a huge part of her appeal when she tried to surgically change them). Also: Chris Rock. He’s Chris Rock. Hilarious minor role.

And Jerry Seinfeld. As a bee. It’s kind of a big deal. I loved the movie when I first saw it, and then eventually just thought of it as that movie where Jerry Seinfeld is a bee. But the whole thing absolutely works, and is worth celebrating.

Cinderella Man (2005)

rating: ****

the story: The Great Depression is almost Jim Braddock's greatest opponent.

review: Boxing is such a familiar movie premise at this point it can be easy to take for granted, but there's a reason it's used so much, because it's inherently cinematic.  It's almost better to watch boxing in the movies than any other way.  Cinderella Man, in turn, dramatizes one of the great boxing stories, a comeback tale that dwarfs the later fictional Rocky Balboa saga.

It's also a Russell Crowe vehicle.  It seems as if Hollywood (and/or the press) periodically chews up and spits out its stars, finding whatever pretense it can (there always seems to be one), and this was just about the point where Crowe's remarkable Oscars streak (starring in back-to-back Best Picture winners, Gladiator and A Beautiful Mind) had reached its sell-by date, right when he seemed to have found another surefire winner.  But the system was done with him, and that's all you really needed to know about Cinderella Man.  Right?

Crowe has been chasing Brando his whole career, by his own admission.  Before he became a known acting commodity, Crowe was acting singing (yeah! he sang before he acted) "I Just Wanna Be Like Marlon Brando."  Brando's early defining role was washed-up boxer Terry Malloy ("I coulda been a contenda!").  It's not hard to imagine Crowe envisioning himself playing Malloy, after a fashion, and the audience finally getting to see the guy actually box.  And of course, because it's based on a real story, Malloy getting to hold his head high for an entirely different reason, at the end of the movie.

Cinderella Man is in some ways the end of the old Hollywood, before blockbusters finally squeezed out the traditional drama in the popular imagination.  The Oscars, ironically, no longer have time for movies like it, even though their whole stereotype is built on it.  But Cinderella Man isn't just the stereotype.  As I say at the beginning of the review, it's about the boxing itself, how well it translates to film, and about perhaps the greatest boxing story ever.

Crowe's only real support in all this is Paul Giamatti, in a role that catches him at the exact moment he was attempting to finally transition into a leading man, thanks to the one-two punch (pop! pop!) of American Splendor and Sideways that helped studios and audiences finally discover his unique appeal.  His role in Cinderalla Man expands as the movie continues, but it's still clearly a supporting one.  There's also Renee Zellweger, who was in the midst of her own career transition, downward, having once been a Hollywood darling.  Her role shrinks in the movie as it goes along, naturally.  Director Ron Howard, of course, who helmed Crowe previously in A Beautiful Mind, was afterward best known for his Robert Langdon adaptations, and never again, like Crowe, embraced by the Oscar set.

Crowe never did get to make movies like this again.  His subsequent career has been marked with reinvention.  So perhaps different for the better.  Cinderella Man is a neat little swan song for all involved.