Maya The Bee
Director: Alexs Stadermann
Actors: Jacki Weaver, Noah Taylor, Coco Jack Gillies, Kodi Smit-McPhee
Release Date: Friday 23rd October 2015
Genre(s): Animation
Running time: Germany minutes
Wait, didn’t we already see this movie? Didn’t the Jerry Seinfeld micro universe vehicle Bee Movie tackle a bee who rebels against predetermination and unite enemies? And wasn’t that just a lift from A Bug’s Life/Antz? While this German/Australian co-production, and adaptation of the TV series, which is in turn an adaptation of a children’s book from the 1920s, doesn’t pollinate any new flowers, it is a cute little thing.
Maya (Gillies) isn’t a bee who plays by the rules. She hatches before she’s supposed to and quizzes her elders on why bees have to behave a certain way, failing to understand why "Bees don’t dream" and "bees don’t sing". When she witnesses the ambitious Buzzlina Von Beena (Weaver) steal the Queen Bee’s precious jelly and move to take control of the hive, Maya is banished to the meadow where she is supposed to meet certain death at the hands of the hive’s mortal enemies: the hornets. However, she teams up with fellow outsider Billy (Smit-McPhee), a grasshopper (Richard Roxburgh) and a hornet (Joel Franco), and they try to make it back to safety...
With its relentlessly upbeat tone and its innocent nature, Maya The Bee Movie is aimed at a slightly younger audience than recent animated outings and isn’t concerned about slipping in the odd joke for the adults (think less Pixar, more Curious George). As always the message is commendable: kids don’t have to think a certain way just because their parents do, that it’s okay if you don’t fit in, and there’s a subtext of not marching off to war based on the prejudice of others (but you have to go looking for it).
But it doesn’t flow like it should, with sequences bolted together in a jarring fashion to keep the story pushing forward to its inevitable ending, and while the animation is bright and cute, it’s a league behind the likes of Disney. There isn’t enough originality to warrant a sequel either (when has that stopped anyone?) but the younger of yours may get a bang out of it.
