Let's start with a movie, shall we?

My entire family was recovering from a stomach bug today. And I'm pretty sure it wasn't food poisoning, though I did the requisite scrutinization of the fridge contents and self-blame game anyway. I would say it's a virus if one kid comes down with it Tuesday morning, and the other child and 3rd child (aka husband) on Wednesday while I have the joy of cleaning it all up and then not getting it until Thursday, wouldn't you? But I digress... already...

So to treat ourselves for making it through all of that, not before an ER visit with one dehydrated little boy, mind you, we decided to have a family movie night. I made the executive decision to choose the movie because I was not going to sit through another episode of Thomas the Tank Engine, Dora, or Dragon Tales. And heaven forbid we go to Blockbuster and get something other than Thomas and the Magic Railroad. (Have you seen that? Ugh... we'll discuss later.)

Anyway, we got Bee Movie, and I'll say that I was fairly happy with it. The Mom-critic in me gives it 3 out of 4 stars. The real movie fan in me says more like 1.5 out of 4.

The film met my criteria for a good family-night flick:
1) it kept the kids entertained
2) the plot was easy to follow as I fetched food and drink on demand
3) laughs for the grown-ups
4) nothing too risque for little eyes
5) I didn't have to think, or explain a whole lot to my inquisitive eldest child

Now would be a good time to tell you that my kids are 4.5 and 2 years of age. The 4.5-year-old has always been discriminating about his movies. The two-year-old watches anything that's on the tube. My husband (who I love dearly so I've made my last joke at his expense above), is a serious movie buff. Serious. So I'll also tell you he didn't like this movie... maybe 1 out of 4 stars.

But as I said, my Mompinion is that it is a safe and fun film for the family. I liked the take on the exploitation of bees, the little neatly packaged ecology lesson, the humor of the whole bee world. The voice-overs were great (how many did you recognize?) and the whole look and feel was, well, just entertaining. Where the film loses ground for my inner film critic, is in the fact that the plot skips a whole lot of steps as it goes along. For example, one minute Vanessa is freaking out about talking to a bee, and a few short scenes later, she's helping that same bee draft a lawsuit. Gee, how'd we get there? But then the Mom-critic appreciates that same aspect. Kept things moving and fast enough to keep me from having to answer the endless barrage of questions I'd been getting lately while watching, reading, or really doing anything.

And that little ecology lesson... I'll say my kids probably didn't know a whole lot about bees before this other than to try to stay away from them. So since Spring is soon upon us, we'll build on what we saw here and have some fun with it when we get to go outside.

But what's that forecast for the weekend? Rain, rain and more rain. And bees can't fly in the rain.