A bee (Jerry Seinfeld), destined to slave in a honey factory for eternity, breaks free and discovers the precious golden goo is being sold to humans en masse and resolves to free the bees from their sticky situation. They should have called it Honey Makes the World Go Round.

The best thing about this film is it’s clearly about something: it’s about bees, quite literally, and their importance to the world, but it’s also about how we all play our part in a functioning society and, arguably, about people recognising and accepting their place.

But within this idea it takes so many bizarre steps and turns it feels like a cinematic bee trying to point you towards a flower the other side of spaghetti junction. This is felt mostly during the film’s middle act, a long courtroom scene where bees literally sue humans for taking their honey.

The sequence gives Turbo‘s car-racing snails a run for its honey in the arena of bugs interacting with human activity. And since it will only confuse any kiddies who aren’t knowledgeable about the intricacies of class action lawsuits, it becomes difficult to tell who this film was made for.

This is all centred on a character who appears to be built around Jerry Seinfeld. Not only is he voiced by Seinfeld, but it’s also the same New York wise-guy humour for which he’s known. Which is all very well, except it’s a film about bees. There are some good throwaway lines and satirical side-swipes at modern society but not enough to make it work. It’s all bound together by soulless and inconsistent animation and flat direction, so by the time it’s finished you’ll be wondering what the buzz was about.