Bee Movie

Bee Movie earned $126.6 million in the United States and Canada and $166.9 million in other countries, for a worldwide total of $293.5 million.[2] DreamWorks Animation reported the film's net profit as $27.3 million, particularly home media revenues.[13]

The film was released with American Gangster and Martian Child on November 2, 2007.[2][14] Bee Movie earned $10.2 million on its first day. The film debuted at second earning $39.1 million from 3,928 theaters.[15] Its second weekend earnings dropped by 32 percent to $26 million,[16][17] and followed by another $14.3 million the third weekend.[18] Bee Movie completed its theatrical run in the United States and Canada on February 14, 2008.[19]

Bee Movie has an approval rating of 49% based on 174 professional reviews on the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, with an average rating of 5.6/10. Its critical consensus reads, "Bee Movie has humorous moments, but its awkward premise and tame delivery render it mostly forgettable."[20] Metacritic (which uses a weighted average) assigned Bee Movie a score of 54 out of 100 based on 34 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".[21] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B+" on an A+ to F scale.[22]

Michael Phillips of the Chicago Tribune gave the film two and a half stars out of four, saying "It's on the easygoing level of Surf's Up, and a full tick up from, say, Over the Hedge or The Ant Bully. But given the Seinfeld pedigree it's something of a disappointment."[23] Peter Travers of Rolling Stone gave the film three out of four stars, saying "At its relaxed best, when it's about, well, nothing, the slyly comic Bee Movie is truly beguiling."[24] Desson Thomson of The Washington Post said, "Bee Movie feels phoned in on every level. The images, usually computer animation's biggest draw, are disappointingly average. And as for the funny stuff, well, that's where you were supposed to come in."[25]

A. O. Scott of The New York Times gave the film three and a half stars out of four, saying "The most genuinely apian aspect of Bee Movie is that it spends a lot of its running time buzzing happily around, sniffing out fresh jokes wherever they may bloom."[26] Claudia Puig gave the film one and a half stars out of four, saying "Bee Movie is certainly not low-budget, but it has all the staying power and creative value of a B-movie. The secret life of bees, as told by Seinfeld, is a bore with a capital B."[24] Steven Rea of The Philadelphia Inquirer gave the film three stars out of four, saying "Bee Movie is not Shrek, and it is not Ratatouille either (by far the standout computer-animated feature of the year). But it has enough buzzing wit and eye-popping animation to win over the kids—and probably more than a few parents, too."[27] Richard Roeper gave the film a positive review, saying "This is a beautifully animated, cleverly executed, warm and funny adventure."[24]

Roger Ebert gave the film two out of four stars, saying "All of this material, written by Seinfeld and writers associated with his television series, tries hard, but never really takes off. We learn at the outset of the movie that bees theoretically cannot fly. Unfortunately, in the movie, that applies only to the screenplay. It is really, really, really hard to care much about a platonic romantic relationship between Renee Zellweger and a bee, although if anyone could pull it off, she could."[28] Ty Burr of The Boston Globe gave the film three out of four stars, saying "The vibe is loose-limbed and fluky, and the gags have an extra snap that's recognizably Seinfeldian. If I believed in a sitcom afterlife, I'd swear the whole thing was cooked up by Kramer and George's dad."[29]

Bee Movie led the 35th Annie Awards season with five nominations (including Best Animated Feature).[30] At the 65th Golden Globe Awards, it was nominated for Best Animated Feature Film.[31] The 13th Critics' Choice Awards nominated the film for Best Animated Feature.[32][33]

Years after the film's release, Bee Movie had an unexpected rise in popularity as an Internet meme. In 2015, posts of the entire film screenplay spread across Facebook.[34][35] In November 2016, YouTube user "Avoid at All Costs" uploaded a video The entire bee movie but every time they say bee it gets faster where the entire film sped up every time the word "bee" was used.[36][37] Its popularity spawned several variants where the film (or its trailer) were edited in unusual ways.[38] Vanity Fair later characterized the film's popularity as "totally bizarre",[39] and later identified Jason Richards as one of the meme's larger promoters through his @Seinfeld2000 Twitter account, citing the "off-brand Pixar quality",[39] while writer Barry Marder referred to the relationship between bees and humans.[40] Inverse felt the film's internet popularity being helpful to millennials that saw it.[41] Paris Martineau of New York magazine identified the meme started on Tumblr in c. 2011 at which point users posted the opening quotation identifying it as inspiring. By December 2012, however, these posts became so ubiquitous that it would inspire parodies.[42] It was suggested that the spread of videos such as The entire bee movie but every time they say bee it gets faster was inspired by the preceding popularity of the "We Are Number One" memes, many of which used a similar title format of "We Are Number One but..."[38] Seinfeld expressed no interest in making a sequel to Bee Movie through its online popularity.[43]

Two lawsuits followed the film's release: A group of Swedish animation students, who were represented by an American attorney, sued because their concept developed in 2000, titled Beebylon, had similarities to Bee Movie. A separate suit was brought by Florida-based cosmetics company Beeceuticals over the use of their trademarked phrase "Give Bees a Chance". Both of these lawsuits were rejected.[lower-alpha 1]