How much reality do we need in a movie?

We are big Seinfeld fans in our house. And Bee Movie has opened which stars Jerry Seinfeld (he also helped write it). I've read three reviews of it so far and two like it and one doesn't. That's OK - we're going to see it no matter what. This is one of the many advantages of having children - we get to see a lot of animated features that we might not see. And I have to say, I've enjoyed almost all of them: Cars, Shrek, Brother Bear, Home on the Range, Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, Surf's Up, Hoodwinked, The Polar Express, Madagascar, Robots, Chicken Little, Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius, Monsters Inc., Ice Age, Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron and lots of others. And these are only the animated movies we've seen in the theater. We've seen live action movies in the theater and animated movies on tape and DVD. So I understand the idea of the non-reality of movies in general and especially in animated movies.

But it strikes me as odd that three of the movies are about the social insects: Bee Movie, Antz and A Bug's Life. And all three of those are about a "worker" insect and all three had male lead characters. This posting is really late. I originally started it back on November 2, 2007, the day before we were going to see the movie. Now (November 14), I see in the New York Times, there is an article about this very subject. I swear, I had the idea first! But they have quotes from famous biologists so you might want to read the Times article, too.

Now, we all know that the insects that do the real work in a bee hive or an ant colony are all female. The male ants and bees are kept around only to mate with the queen and then they die. Not that this isn't an important job! If it wasn't for them, the colony and hive would disappear after a generation. But this is not the job the males are given in these movies. Is it the fact that studios, writers and directors feel that the public will not accept a female lead in these movies? It's not that they think that "bugs" can't be voiced by women because there are plenty of females in the movie and the queen of the hive and nest are always female in the movies. Maybe it's the fact that the workers are sometimes called on to fight or lift heavy objects. We still haven't gotten used to women doing these things. And by the way, ants and bees are NOT bugs but of the order Hymenoptera. Bugs are the familiar name for the order Hemiptera.

Now that we've seen the movie, I can tell you that two of the three of us enjoyed it. Our 5-year old daughter didn't want to go ("Yuck, I don't want to see something about bugs!"). My son liked it and so did I (there are always great "parent" jokes in these types of movies and this one has more than the usual number). But my wife wasn't crazy about it. I wonder what she would have thought if it had had a female lead? Maybe the movie could have been about the lead character's conflict between just staying in the hive (cleaning up after everyone, teaching the young and making the food) versus getting out to look for pollen, defend the colony- you know - more the female athlete role. Now that would be an interesting movie about "bugs".