Bee Movie

Blu-ray Review

Paramount

Dreamworks

Release: June 3, 2008

Bee Movie was a smash hit, releasing in theaters last November, receiving praise from critics and movie-goers alike. The film performed well at the box office and when released on DVD. Paramount has now released the Blu-ray version of Bee Movie, and it certainly has some buzz around it.

Bee Movie was co-written, produced, and also starred actor Jerry Seinfeld.

Seinfeld plays Barry B. Benson, a newly graduated bee who wants more from life than just making honey.

The story is certainly unique, as Benson meets a girl, Vanessa (Renee Zellweger), and realized humans are stealing the bees’ honey. He wants to sue the human race.

Bee Movie is certainly an enjoyable and entertaining film, and one which adults and kids will certainly enjoy. Though personally, I do not feel that it can stand up to something like Disney’s Ratatouille, but it is certainly a fun film.

This colorful and well-animated film will be a fun one for kids, and the performance by Jerry Seinfeld is solid. Highly-recommended as a film for people who love animated features.

The video quality for this Blu-ray release is really top-notch. The film looked great on DVD so needless to say the Blu-ray transfer is near flawless. The level of detail with the characters, environments, etc. is extremely impressive. The colors are very vibrant, giving the animated film a great level of pop off of your screen. The black levels are also equally impressive. This is a top-notch film on the Blu-ray format, a great transfer.

The audio quality is equally as impressive and is presented in Dolby 5.1 TrueHD. The audio mix does a great job of being extremely immersive throughout. You will find that the film uses the surround channels nicely to keep you into the action. The dialogue is also presented extremely well. Buzzing has never sounded as good as it does on Blu-ray!

The Blu-ray release has some nice extras including commentary from Jerry Seinfeld as well as lost scenes, alternate endings, etc. All of these features were included in the standard DVD release and are quite plentiful.

The Blu-ray release also has some exclusive content as well though including a full feature-length picture-in-picture storyboard. This is a great new way to experience Bee Movie as you get a lot of insight into the origins of the movie from it. Another big exclusive is the ability to customize the menus on the Blu-ray release with your favorite character.

A pop-up trivia game is also included called Barry’s Trivia Track, as well as a Web-enabled movie guide called The World of Bees.

The last Blu-ray exclusive is another Web-enabled feature called Barry’s Digital Coloring Book, which allows you to digitally paint your favorite characters from the film.

Paramount has done a great job to bring Bee Movie to the Blu-ray format. The new Blu-ray exclusive features look great and add a lot over what was offered in the DVD release. The video and audio quality are very impressive, as this is one of those films that really looks great thanks to Blu-ray. For Blu-ray fans, Bee Movie is a must-own.

Film: 8.5 –

A very enjoyable film, as good as Ratatouille and others.

Video: 9.2 –

The film looks absolutely incredible on Blu-ray, great colors, detail, etc.

Audio: 9.0

A big step up from the DVD audio mix with a great level of clarity, sound effects and more.

Special Features: 9.0

You get all of the great extras from the DVD release as well as new Blu-ray exclusive extras. A loaded release!

Final Score: 9.2