What is the target audience for Bee Movie, Jerry Seinfeld's much-hyped dip into the now-crowded pool of CGI animated kids' movies?

As near as I can figure, it's eight-year-olds who read Entertainment Weekly.

Awash in hip, urban chatter, with Hollywood references and cameos (from Ray Liotta to Sting to Larry King), it even has a painstaking homage to The Graduate (complete with the dive-in-the-pool-to-drown-out-the-noise-of-my-nagging-parents scene).

Oh, and it's largely a courtroom drama.

See anything here yet that might keep your kid glued to his seat for 90 minutes?

The latter Shrek movies were also guilty of being too hip for the room (although the jokes were cleverer), but they had the offsetting scatology of farts and belches and other things hilarious to children (and to more adults than will admit it). Oh, for one lousy stinkbug from A Bug's Life to make this movie dirty its hands. Yes, producer/writer/star Seinfeld is a parent these days, but I can't help feel by the fastidiousness of his nature and primness of his creative vision that he must pay people to change his kids' diapers.

Though it's cleverly conceived and rendered, Bee Movie never rises above the cuteness of its premise. Barry B. Benson (Seinfeld) is a graduating worker bee (class of 9:30 a.m.) who's horrified by the sudden realization that the "job" he chooses in the hive will be what he does for the rest of his life. Abandoning his conformist friend Adam Flayman (Matthew Broderick) to take an unauthorized flight with the "pollen jockeys" (a warrior class reminiscent of the soldiers in that other, similar, Dreamworks movie about hymenoptera, Antz), Barry gets lost in a rainstorm and, taking shelter in an apartment, does the unthinkable -- he makes contact with a human. Specifically he talks to a florist named Vanessa (Renee Zellweger), who saves him from getting swatted and ends up sharing cappuccino with him.

The beautifully rendered scenes of flight are key to Bee Movie's best action scenes. Unfortunately, there are relatively few of them. One of these is when Barry discovers that humans steal and sell honey, and he embarks on a journey to find the factory-apiary (inspiring him to sue the human race).

Along the way he meets the only laugh-out-loud character in the movie, a mosquito named Mooseblood (Chris Rock), who, unfortunately is only in for two cameos (in the second of which, he utters the movie's single funniest line).

Instead, Bee Movie is preoccupied with banter and bee-puns. "Is she Bee-ish?" Barry's mom wants to know when he says he "met someone." "Well, she's not a wasp," he replies. Or when they run through the pantheon of great historical bees: "Bee Columbus, Bee Gandhi ... Bee-Jesus." Or -- I won't even bother with the context -- "That's not even a real queen! That's a drag queen!" And like that.

There's a weird sort of environmental message that suggests that humans stealing honey is necessary to keep bees working to pollinate flowers.

Meanwhile, Seinfeld himself advertises his shortcomings as an actor in his portrayal of a bee -- he's got an observational "what's the deal with ..." voice and a higher-pitched excited shouting voice. Which is not as big a deal as the fact that this veteran of a show about nothing has created a kid film with not enough going on.

(This film is rated PG)
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