Bible Bees Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		2.0
Video		3.0
Audio		3.5
Extras		0.5
Overall		2.0

Bible Bees Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Martin Liebman September 6, 2020

Christian animation is always playing catch-up in terms of budget and beauty, lagging far behind the big Hollywood players that enjoy comparatively endless budgets, manpower, and other vital resources at their disposal. Shows like Bible Bees, the VeggieTales series, and The Bedbug Bible Gang are more concerned with content, and it is through the family friendly and faith-based messages that they aim too make their place in (and change!) the world. VeggieTales finds some success with a somewhat bigger budget than the others, not to mention superior narrative structure and flow and a little more technical know-how working behind the scenes, but the bottom-scraping productions, like Bedbugs and, here, Bible Bees, simply leave everything else behind in order to push the message forward. While noble in effort, it's difficult to get enthusiastic about something like Bible Bees when the support structure is so flimsy that even positive content can't carry it.

Worker bees Sunny and Petal have collected a lot of pollen and just know that Queen Buttercup will be proud of them and their hard work. Besides, not only did they collect the pollen, they found a new clover field rich with everything they need to gather even more. They heard about the new field from Bailey the dog, but when the Queen learns that they failed to thank Bailey for his help, the young bees visit Chomps the field mouse to learn about why they need to be thankful. Chomps shares the Biblical story of Jesus healing ten lepers, only one of whom was thankful for the miracle. As the days pass (presumably), Sunny and Petal come to learn much more about life and the Bible from a number of friendly creatures who live nearby.

Bible Bees means well but its aesthetics and other technical attributes are simply not up to par. The animation is crude. Characters are blocky, environments lack refinement, and motion is jerky. The voice work ranges from acceptable to awful. Main characters sunny and Petal are the most obvious offenders, but even Queen Buttercup sounds rote. The work is not uncaring or lazy, just generic and lacking authentic emotion and cadence. Little voice issues and pronunciation problems pop up every now and then. For example, the word “alfalfa” is pronounced “alpha alpha” by two different characters early in the film (which is corrected a few minutes later when the word is said a third time). But it just never comes across as even remotely polished in any of its technical attributes. Some of that can be forgiven due to obvious budget limitations, but some of the issues, particularly the voice work, could have been refined with a little more effort.

Granted the film is more concerned with message rather than budget and razzle-dazzle, which is fine, but words like "structure" and "subtle" and "accessible" are not in the film's vocabulary. Writer Aarow James and Director Sandy Lynn Smith build a movie of extreme narrative simplicity in an effort to promote the content as quickly and efficiently as possible, with little regard for visual flair or narrative depth. The real problems here lie in two critical areas: first, the structure is so thoughtless that the film never finds a rhythm. It's literally a wash-rinse-repeat cycle that see the bees move from one lesson and character to another, learning about life and the Bible's teachings on it as they go about collecting pollen. The result is a film that is more a series of vignettes than a cohesive larger construct. It would have undoubtedly worked much better as-is were it broken into bite-sized chunks with each lesson an individual episode rather than attempting to cram it all into a 75-minute "movie" that has no arc or structure. Second, the fullness of the messages are not geared to the audience. The basic concepts -- being thankful, the importance of friendship, serving others, telling the truth, gratitude, friendship, and staying strong in adversity -- are fine and are Biblically based, but they are presented with blunt force rather than finesse, often with accompanying complex scripture with big words and nuanced concepts that might be fine for older children, but younger children just learning about such things will likely gloss over it and quickly become tired of the endless repetitive structure.

Bible Bees Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Bible Bees is not a good looking production, and it raises the age-old question of scoring a Blu-ray based on the source aesthetics versus the transfer's faithfulness to the source. If it looks poor because the movie inherently looks poor, and the Blu-ray merely replicates that poor look, should it score highly? Or should an ugly source receive low marks for its natural repulsiveness? With Bible Bees, it's not entirely clear where the source issues end and the Blu-ray faults begin. The animation is undeniably crude; jagged edges, aliasing, ringing, and an overall clunky, chunky look define the entirety of the experience. Most every shot shows some severe problem, primarily from those aforementioned issues, and they are only exacerbated by the limited clarity and definition present in the source. Colors are bold enough, with natural greens, yellows, and reds offering enough pop to please, but don't expect to find any nuanced gradations or tonal subtleties. What a tough one to score. It could conceivably be about a 1.5 judging the overall look, or it could range to a 4.0-4.5 or so if the Blu-ray is just about entirely faithful to what it has to work with.

Bible Bees Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Bible Bees features a single audio track, a DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 presentation (optional English SDH subtitles are included). The track is fine, mostly, offering adequate spread along the front two channels. Music enjoys sufficient clarity and stretch. Ambient elements are appropriately integrated within the two-channel configuration. Dialogue is clear and images to the center, though the poor voice work often results in a less than ideal presentation, anyway.

Bible Bees Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Gravitas Ventures' Blu-ray release of Bible Bees contains a single extra: the film's Trailer (1080p, 1:07). No DVD or digital copies are included. this release does not ship with a slipcover.

Bible Bees Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Whittled down to its simplest, the message from Bible Bees is this: as the bees learn about God and obey His commands, they find that their lives are blessed, discovering new opportunities for growth both physically and spiritually. They make new friends, they find more pollen, and their lives are generally happier and more fulfilling. But the movie is structured so poorly, and looks and sounds so bad to boot, that the message is sometimes overwhelmed by the repetitive slog, never mind that it is presented bluntly and supported by scripture that the youngest of children might find too complex. The film does simplify along the way but it's just not enough to overcome the myriad of problems that hold it back, structurally, narratively, and technically alike. Gravitas Ventures' Blu-ray is featureless beyond a trailer. The 1080p transfer is fine in that it displays the film with all of its (seemingly) inherent warts and cut corners. The two-channel audio track does nothing special but it's more than capable and is the technical highlight in the entire package. Check out VeggieTales instead for superior animated faith-based content.