BY GLENN WHIPP >FILM CRITIC

We knew ants had it hard from watching "A Bug's Life," "The Ant Bully" and "Antz." Now we learn that bees don't have it much better in Jerry Seinfeld's "Bee Movie," an amiable, animated comedy that's a notable departure from the comedian's "no hugging, no learning" sensibility.

The movie opens in the Seussian hive where Barry (Seinfeld) and his best bee bud, Adam (Matthew Broderick), have graduated college and are now faced with choosing a job that they will hold for the rest of their lives. The limited scope of his career opportunities comes as a surprise to Barry, who didn't realize that "bees, as a species, haven't had a day off in 27 million years."

"So you'll just work us to death?" Barry asks the job placement bee.

"We'll sure try!" comes the cheerful reply.

That exchange is fairly typical of the film's humor, which mixes jokes and sight gags about a bee's accelerated life cycle and work ethic with Seinfeld's quirky comedy. Seinfeld's sensibility - he wrote the movie with "Seinfeld" staffers Spike Feresten and Andy Robin along with Barry Marder - takes the movie to some agreeably nutty places when Barry leaves the hive in search of adventure.

Barry's winged odyssey ultimately involves a kindhearted florist (Renee Zellweger), a lawsuit over "stolen" honey and a hilarious homage to the pool scene in "The Graduate." It's a movie where Ray Liotta has his own private line of honey, Sting is held up as an example of "bee culture being casually stolen by humans" and the "glorification" of the honey bear is put into the proper perspective.

Seinfeld's voice has always been great at expressing comedic outrage.

On TV, it was his face that betrayed him. (He couldn't resist cracking a smile.) That's not a problem here, of course, and one of the movie's main pleasures is simply listening to Seinfeld brandishing his cry of dismay over the course of 90 minutes.

As mentioned earlier, "Bee Movie" does offer a lesson or two. Barry learns that individual expression may be great and all, but it's a collective power that gets things done. Or you could read that another way: It's easier to go with the flow, do nothing and leave well enough alone. On that count, George Costanza would certainly approve.

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Glenn Whipp (818) 713-3672

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BEE MOVIE 
>PG: mild suggestive humor
>Starring: Voices of Jerry Seinfeld, Renee Zellweger, Matthew Broderick.
>Director: Simon J. Smith, Steve Hickner.
>Running time: 1 hr. 30 min.
>Playing: Area wide.
>In a nutshell: Jerry Seinfeld's comic sensibility enlivens this tale of a bee who wants to fly by the seat of his pants.

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