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If Bee Movie is the most significant creative output of writer/comedian Jerry Seinfeld’s career since his mega-popular television sit-com ended its nine year run nearly a decade ago, he should be worried! Seinfeld co-writes, produces and provides the main vocal characterization for this lame and mostly unfunny CG animated film that’s not really just for kids, and certainly not entertaining enough for adults.

Bee Movie concerns several short days in the life of a bee named Barry B. Benson. Barry, who is voiced by Seinfeld, is a recent college graduate and is bored with the prospects of spending his entire career making honey in the local hive. For a short while the narrative becomes somewhat of a spoof on Mike Nichols’ The Graduate, until Barry ventures outside the hive into the big city, breaking several bee laws and falling in love with a human florist, Vanessa Bloome, voiced by Renee Zellweger.

Directors Steve Hickner and Simon J. Smith and the team of Dreamworks animators present a most unlikely and uninteresting little romance between woman and bee that exists until Barry discovers that humans are using all sorts of honey products for themselves — so he decides to sue humans for their use/abuse of the bees’ natural resources.

The film’s animation and humor are equally a mixed bag of mediocrity. While the outside world is creatively colorful and bright, the inner hive world is unimaginatively drab and the computer generated bees mostly look like robotic insects from out of someone’s science fiction imagination. The film’s more wicked humor comes not from recycled Seinfeld’s standup joke telling style, but from wise-cracking mosquito character named Mooseblood, voiced by Chris Rock. His best line is in response to some character questioning why he becomes a lawyer, for which Mooseblood’s reply is “I was already a blood sucking parasite”.

1.5 Stars, PG