Too bzzzzy

Little Miss Nat’s TV and I went to see The Bee Movie a few days ago, and lemme tell ya, it’s pretty bad. Its humor is weak, its logic is weaker, but the real weakness was the computer animation.
Don’t get me wrong – they certainly threw enough processor cycles at it. Every hair on anyone’s head is fully defined and has its own motion. In fact, that’s the problem. Every hair is defined. Everything is as precisely correct as it could be. No one seemed to ask about whether it should all be defined. It created a visual blandness, and a problematic lack of contrast between foreground and background; everything is too busy, and thus too bland.
And some of the animation instincts seem to come from the wrong place. If you watch the facial expression on the lead female character, it’s all very fully rendered versions of very simple cartoon expressions, with carefully-rendered frame-by-frame rendering of the in-between images. It’s like when someone takes a simple comic drawing and renders it with lots of modeling, reflections, and flares, losing what works in the simplicity and not gaining from truly-informed subtleties. Ugly, ugly movie.
And, of course, there’s product placement. Yes, I’m spending that money to go see an ad for Cinnabon. Unsurprising, for a movie where even the TV ads had sponsors.
But at least it’s out now, which means we’re past the worst of the endless stream of promotion. I keep expecting to see Jerry Seinfeld every time I open the closet.

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