About

Bee Movie is a 2007 Dreamworks computer-animated comedy film about the adventures of Barry B. Benson, a disillusioned bee who leaves his hive and goes on a journey in search of a new career. Despite its moderate commercial success and mixed critical reception, the film gained a significant ironic fandom on YouTube and Tumblr.

History

Produced by Dreamworks Animation and featuring voice acting by American comedian Jerry Seinfeld and actress Renée Zellweger, the film centers around the protagonist Barry B. Benson, a talking bee who fights to reclaim sovereignty from humans. Bee Movie was released in theaters on November 2nd, 2007.

Reception

Upon its release, the film grossed $126 million at the box office in the United States and a worldwide total of $287 million. While the film was regarded a moderate box office success worldwide, it was met with disappointing performance and lukewarm reception in the United States. As of 2016, Bee Movie is DreamWorks Animation's third lowest-grossing computer-animated film. The movie holds a rating of 51% (based on 169 reviews) on Rotten Tomatoes and 54% (based on 34 review) on Metacritic.

Online Presence

On May 14th, 2012, a page for Bee Movie was created on TV Tropes.^[12] On March 16th, 2013, Redditor bottledbeaches created the /r/beemovie^[10] subreddit. On July 22nd, 2016, BuzzFeed^[13] published an article titled "For Everyone Who Still Can't Believe 'Bee Movie' is Real," which highlighted several Tumblr posts about the film. On July 29th, Seinfeld posted a tweet asking if there was any interest in a sequel to the film, which garnered more than 47,000 likes and 24,200 retweets in four months (shown below).

The following day, the tweet reached the front page of the /r/movies^[9] subreddit, where many mocked the idea of making Bee Movie 2. On August 19th, the internet humor site Dorkly^[14] released a listicle highlighting the "12 Most WTF Tumblr Posts About Bee Movie." On November 28th, BuzzFeed published an article about various Bee Movie memes.

Related Memes

Bee Shrek Test in the House

Bee Shrek Test in the House is a parody fandom created from a hypothetical crossover involving the characters Shrek, Barry Bee Benson and Johnny Test and Cory Baxter from the show Cory in the House.

Bee Movie Script

The Bee Movie Script, also known by the introductory line “according to all known laws of aviation, there is no way a bee should be able to fly,” is a copypasta that consists entirely of the full-length screenplay of the 2007 computer animated family comedy film Bee Movie, which is typically used in spamming and shitposting on various social media sites, most notably on Tumblr.

Beestiality

Beestiality, sometimes also called Bee-stiality, is the shipping name for the particularly bizarre romance arc of the film. As Barry and Vanessa spend time together, Ken becomes inexplicably jealous of the bee, and eventually attempts to kill Barry, prompting his wife to break up with him. The absurdity of Vanessa leaving her husband of fifteen years for an insect has lead to the Barry/Vanessa ship gaining a popular ironic fandom on sites like Tumblr.

Bee Movie But

Bee Movie But is a series of video and audio remixes of the film based around a particular altered characteristic. On October 22nd, 2016, YouTuber wankerflaps uploaded a video titled "Bee Movie But it Keeps Getting Faster," featuring the audio track from the film which is progressively sped up (shown below, left). Within one moth, the video gained over 902,000 views and 4,300 comments. On November 3rd, YouTuber Avoid at All Costs posted a remix of the Bee Movie trailer that slows down each time the word "bee" is uttered, The video has since been removed.

On November 4th, Redditor jacobkj314 posted a screenshot of wankerlflap's YouTube video captioned with a "please disconnect the bluetooth speaker" joke (shown below). In 25 days, the post received more than 2,800 votes (96% upvoted) on the /r/dankmemesf^[7] subreddit.

On November 17th, YouTuber Avoid at All Costs uploaded a remix titled "The Entire Bee Movie but Every Time They Say Bee it Gets Faster," which accumulated more than 11 million views and 33,000 comments within two weeks. While the video has since been removed, it was reuploaded by YouTuber Sektea (shown below, left). On November 22nd, YouTuber That One Ghost Named Asdfghjkl posted a remix titled "The Bee Movie But Without Bees" (shown below, right). Over the next week, the video gained over 3.01 million views and 7,700 comments. On November 28th, Smosh^[11] published an article about the remix videos.

Do You Like Jazz?

"Do You Like Jazz?" refers to shitposts, YouTube Poops, and Word Replacement Remixes that take a clip from the film of Barry Benson asking "Ya Like Jazz?" On November 10th, 2016, amidst a wave of Bee Movie remixes, YouTube user Boredmations2 posted the clip,^[17] acknowledging the shitposts with the video description, "This is my second Bee Movie shitpost. This isn't even a shitpost though it's just 'YA LIKE JAZZ.'" (shown below, left) It has gained over 101,000 views as of January 12th, 2016. This kickstarted a wave of Bee Movie remixes featuring the clip. To date, the most popular was posted by James Nielssen on December 18th, 2016, titled "Barry Benson saying "ya like jazz?" 1,073,741,824 times." (shown below, right) It has been viewed over 2.4 million times.

Search Interest

External References