Unlike the great Bee Movie trailers, I haven't been as kind to DreamWorks Animation's posters for the Jerry Seinfeld, Renée Zellweger, Chris Rock, John Goodman vehicle, which opens November 2nd. This is because the one-sheets have delivered a smirking Barry B. Benson, which doesn't do much to promote this flick.
No one likes to see the hero in a comedy on top of the world all the time. Audiences tend to like the bumbling Little Guy (Keaton, Chaplin, Woody Allen) who somehow manages to come out on top despite the world using him as its personal toilet.
New Bee Movie Poster: Terror and a Tennis Ball
With that in mind, Bee Movie's marketing department hit one out of the park with this latest poster, which gives us the titular bee (voiced by Seinfeld, natch) in that iconic scene in the trailer where he take an unexpected ride on a flying tennis ball. Much like the Ratatouille poster which featured Remy getting too close to a set of kitchen utensils, it puts the hero in comedic peril, and isn't that what we all want to see?
That said, I'm not sold on the tagline "Honey just got funny." I think Jerry can do better than that.
But otherwise, kudos to DreamWorks for finally getting it right with their Bee Movie posters. The flick opens November 2nd.
Fun Fact: Thanks to Seinfeld's mid-1990's success, the Porsche-obsessed Seinfeld now owns what is considered to be one of the largest collection of Porsches in the world: 47 in total. Journalist Paul Bannister reported that his collection includes several Porsche 911s from various years, 10 Porsche Boxsters each painted a different color and an identical 1955 Porsche 550 Spyder to the car that actor James Dean was driving when he crashed and died in September of 1955 near Cholame, California.
The jewel of Seinfeld's collection is a $700,000 Porsche 959, one of only 268 ever built. Seinfeld was initially not allowed to drive it in the U.S. since it wasn't "street legal." Since the cars were so rare, Porsche never submitted four 959's for U.S. emission and crash tests, meaning the vehicles were never certified. Seinfeld imported the car "for exhibition purposes," which meant the vehicle could never be taken out on public roads. The Porsche 959 was finally certified street legal in late 2003.
In several episodes of Seinfeld, Jerry drove a Saab 900 convertible but he had a Porsche themed painting, depicting a Porsche 904 GTS race car competing in the 1964 Targa Florio race in Italy, on a wall in his apartment. He also had another Porsche racing poster featuring a Porsche 550 Spyder depicting the 1958 Targa Florio.
Dominic von Riedemann - Dominic is the Animated Film Feature Writer, and winner of 11 Suite 101 Editors' Choice Awards.
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