Bee Movie is now streaming on Netflix. And God help us all. Released in 2007, Bee Movie is a charming animated movie about Barry B. Benson (Jerry Seinfeld), an idealistic honeybee who sets out to sue the human race for exploitation after discovering that humans sell and consume honey.
Come to think of it, the wacky premise of the family movie couldn’t be more meme-ready if it tried — especially since a subplot involving Barry’s relationship with the human Vanessa (Renée Zellweger) has some romantic undertones.
So, it really shouldn’t be so surprising that the internet latched on to this comedy movie, turning it from a fairly mid Dreamworks caper to a generation-defining meme. And now a whole new generation can obsess over the Bee Movie too, thanks to it being available to stream on Netflix.
Bee Movie definitely isn’t the worst movie of all time. But it’s certainly not one of Dreamworks’ best movies, either. It probably would’ve been destined for a life in pound shop bargain bins if the surreal, unhinged nature of the film didn’t capture the attention of shitposters.
As with many other movie memes, like Shrek, The Lorax, and Morbius, the baseline weirdness of Bee Movie made it the perfect vehicle for post-ironic shitposting. In fact, Bee Movie memes are probably some of the earliest examples of how the internet’s hive mind (sorry, not sorry) shifted to a more cynical, moreish, and surreal posting style where nobody can quite tell whether people are being sarcastic or not.
But the confusion derived by those who aren’t necessarily “in” on the joke is part of the fun and prompts people’s posts to get weirder and weirder. One popular meme format, for example, involved remixing the Bee movie and uploading it to YouTube with self-explanatory titles like ‘Bee Movie, but every time Barry B Benson says “bee” the film speeds up,’ or Barry B Benson delivering mildly funny lines like “ya like jazz” six thousand times simultaneously.
And then, there’s the surprisingly-booming t-shirt market where people can buy the entirety of the Bee Movie script printed on a top. Or else, they can spam the YouTube comments or Tumblr forums by pasting the entire Bee Movie script.
Will the Bee Movie’s return to Netflix lead to a revival of the meme? That remains to be seen, but be sure to check out everything else new on Netflix this month, including new movies, Netflix series, Netflix horror movies, and Netflix documentaries.
You can also check out some of our explainers on the internet’s most popular movie memes, including Patrick Bateman, Gentleminions, Meena from Sing, and, of course, Morbius.