Barry sneaks out of the hive to join the Pollen Jocks, an elite class of bees that go out collecting nectar and pollinating flowers. When Barry gets separated from the swarm and caught in the rain, he finds refuge in the apartment of a florist named Vanessa (Renee Zellweger), and thus starts the most unusual relationship.
Barry and Vanessa become quick friends, and potentially something more, but when Barry helps Vanessa shop for groceries and finds that humans harvest honey, a source of hard work and pride for all bees, Barry gets enraged. As he investigates the source of the human's honey more and finds bee farms, he decides to take action and sue all of mankind on behalf of beedom for stealing their product.
Barry becomes a celebrity in both the bee and human world, especially since it was forbidden for bees to talk to humans, and the lawsuit trial becomes a major media event. I don't want to go into too much detail about how the consequences of the trial play out, but lets just say that Barry's initial views of successfully suing for the return of all the honey in the world doesn't turn out as he expects.
I didn't have the opportunity to see this movie in theaters or on DVD, but the Blu-ray version is just gorgeous and clean. Between the clear skies and parks, fuzzy bee bodies and tennis balls, everything just pops and looks amazing. Voice acting is superb; I especially liked John Goodman's role as the high-paid attorney for the honey companies, as well as Chris Rock's small role as a mosquito named Mooseblood.
As for special features, this disc has a slew of alternate endings that were sketched out, but didn't make it far enough to be animated, as well as a few pop-up videos and audio tracks that might make you re-watch the film a few times. An interesting feature that I don't think I've seen before is customizable menus. There are three or four skins that you can select to change the color scheme and some of the images of the menus.
When it comes down to it, I feel most people need to see this movie at least once. If you can, I would definitely recommend the high-def version since it makes the visuals of the movie just sing. Bee Movie is, simply put, a fairly good tale with a nice message.
