Bee Movie

What’s the latest buzz? Bees!

Jerry Seinfeld created and starred in one of the most popular sitcoms ever. Now, he put together Bee Movie, an animation about Barry, a bee that sues humans for stealing his honey. No, not his girlfriend, silly— the actual honey that he and his fellow bees make.

See, Barry’s boss at the honey factory works him so hard, it gives him hives! The boss, Buzzwell, is played by Larry Miller, who often plays bosses and principals and teachers and others in charge. You might also remember him as Mr. Stein from Keeping up with the Steins, and he has been in a couple of our other Movies of the Month, too.

So Barry the Bee decides to leave the hive and collect pollen from flowers instead of making honey. But his father isn’t sweet in the idea. Barry the Bee’s father is played by Barry the director— Barry Levinson! This Barry is one of the greatest directors alive, and his movies usually have Jewish characters.

There is another great Jewish actor in Bee Movie, Matthew Broderick, as Barry's timid friend. Of course, this is not his first cartoon voice; for instance, Matthew was the voice of the adult Simba in the Disney classic The Lion King.

Speaking of kings, Larry King is in Bee Movie, too! Larry— as opposed to Barry (or Jerry who plays Barry)— is a talk-show host in real life, on CNN since 1985. In more than 20 years there, he has interviewed pretty much every famous person in Washington and Hollywood (including most of the people in our list!). Lately, Larry has leant his famous baritone voice to animation, including parts in the second and third Shrek movies.

Larry wanted so bad to get into radio as a teenager, he worked as a janitor in a radio station. Then they put him on the air because someone quit. His first interview was with a waitress at a Miami restaurant. Just two days later, hit pop singer Bobby Darin heard the show on the radio, found Larry, and gave him an interview! From splashing a mop around to interviewing the singer of “Splish Splash,” Larry has gone on to make a splash for the rest of his 50 years on the radio and TV.

Bee Movie was made after Jerry had lunch with Steven Spielberg. He told him the idea for the movie and Steven said, “We’re making that!” Asked about it later, Jerry told Access Hollywood, “For a Jewish guy to have lunch with Spielberg is like having a second bar mitzvah!”

Aside from the movie being about a bee, Bee Movie gets its title from the Hollywood term “B-movie.” You see, it’s just like a grade on a test. An “A-movie” has “A-list” stars in it, but a B-movie has less famous people, a less polished script, and a lower budget.

So the title is really an inside-Hollywood joke, because Bee Movie is buzzing with A-list talent like everyone we just mentioned... plus non-Jewish stars like Rene Zelwegger, Chris Rock, Kathy Bates, John Goodman, Oprah Winfrey— and guess which rock star?

Well, who else for something called Bee Movie but… Sting!