CREATING BUZZ
Shades of darkness differentiate “Antz,” the 1998 DreamWorks Animation movie starring Woody Allen as an ant, and “Bee Movie,” the 2007 DreamWorks Animation’s movie starring Jerry Seinfeld as a bee.
“Antz,” DreamWorks’ first big animated feature, was practically a polemic against the evils of iron-fisted totalitarianism, with Allen -- whose character first appears on an ant therapist’s couch -- moving from existential anonymity to unlikely heroism.
But Seinfeld’s humor isn’t self-doubting or dreamily apocalyptic, like Allen’s; it’s observational. Likewise, the promotional assault for “Bee Movie” reflects the dichotomy of “Bee Movie” itself -- made for kids but really for adult children of “Seinfeld.” What DreamWorks hopes, of course, is that both constituencies are drawn in by the respective marketing and leave the theater satisfied. “Kids have an entry point with animation that adults don’t have,” Seinfeld said recently. With adults, “it takes them a little longer to kind of buy into that surface layer of phoniness of animation.”
Seinfeld made a “Bee Movie”-plugging guest appearance on the season debut of NBC’s acclaimed sitcom “30 Rock,” which is, not coincidentally, a show steeped in post-boomer, entertainment-industry shorthand.
That kind of topical satire is where DreamWorks Animation chief Jeffrey Katzenberg says his studio has evolved since “Antz.” “Those first five, six movies of ours, they were our research and development,” he said, naturally pointing to the blockbuster “Shrek” as the studio’s “Holy Grail.”
One of the recurring gags in “Bee Movie” features actor Ray Liotta satirizing himself as the pitchman for jars of honey called Ray Liotta’s Private Select, a joke sure to sail over the head of any kid who doesn’t know what “Goodfellas” means. Which is where the fantasy comes in. Barry B. Benson wants to become one of the Pollen Jocks, an elite group of bees who leave the hive to gather the pollen needed to make honey. They’re like Air Force fighter pilots -- men among bees, so to speak, and Barry’s desire to join their ranks is a kind of striving to be included in the adult world.
In the end, the insect is Seinfeld with a bit less sting; the comedian says he softened Barry’s voice after test audiences had issues when his voice strayed too far into “Seinfeld”-ian cynicism. “He’s kind of cute and innocent in a way, so I kind of adjusted it a little bit at a certain point.”
Katzenberg’s enthusiasm for the selling of “Bee Movie” has been somewhat unbidden; earlier this year, at the Cannes Film Festival, the studio chief climbed into a harness and jumped off the eighth story of the Carlton Hotel, sailing across the boardwalk to the beach. It was a dry run for a publicity stunt the next day in which Seinfeld, dressed in a bulbous bee costume, made the same journey from hotel rooftop to a pier adorned with a “Bee Movie” banner.
Time will tell whether they were two giant leaps -- figuratively speaking -- for DreamWorks Animation.
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TASTES SWEET
Could “Bee Movie” bring Jerry Seinfeld his first Oscar? It would nicely round out some of his other awards:
Emmy
1993: Comedy series, “Seinfeld”
Golden Globe
1994: Actor in a comedy series, “Seinfeld”
Screen Actors Guild awards
1997, 1998: Shared the comedy series ensemble award with Michael Richards, Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Jason Alexander
Only good movies
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