BONUS The Friday Show - The Bee Team
Marc:So this guy is like a secret ninja, part of a secret organization called the Beekeepers.
Marc:Then he just retires to be an actual beekeeper.
Guest:Wait, wait, what's his first?
Guest:Was he a beekeeper first?
Guest:And they're like, you're so good at this.
Guest:We're going to train you to be the best fighter in the world.
Marc:Was he a beekeeper?
Marc:And you just found monster.com like, oh, beekeeper position.
Marc:I'm going to apply for that.
Marc:Oh, no.
Guest:This is much different than I expected.
Thank you.
Marc:Okay, Chris.
Marc:Hello, Brendan.
Guest:You ready to talk beekeeper?
Guest:All right.
Guest:So, it's Black Friday.
Guest:Everyone's out, you know, going crazy, shopping, whatever you're doing.
Guest:You're dealing with family, whatever.
Guest:If you would like to listen to us talk about an exceedingly ridiculous film.
Guest:Uh, that is what is here for you today with the beekeeper.
Guest:Uh, we recorded this in advance because Chris and I are with our families, but we wanted to give you a show.
Guest:And Chris had mentioned you watched this movie.
Guest:What was it when you were on the plane, uh, coming from India or something?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Yep.
Marc:Plane going to India.
Marc:I got my dinner and buckled down to watch some Beekeeper.
Guest:All right.
Guest:And all I knew about this movie was that it was a political thriller.
Guest:That was what it was sold to me as.
Marc:Oh, interesting.
Guest:Like, you know, if you go on, like, you know, you just Google the Beekeeper and then it says like the little line underneath that says like, you know, 2024 are political thriller.
Guest:That's what it says.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:Political thriller.
Guest:And I knew it was bonkers.
Guest:That's all I knew about it.
Guest:So you had recommended it.
Guest:I don't know that anyone else had recommended it, but you had recommended it.
Guest:And I thought, okay, we'll watch this like around the election.
Guest:Well, the election fucking sucked.
Guest:So I didn't want to watch anything.
Guest:So we didn't talk about this.
Guest:So we pushed it off and now we're here on black Friday.
Guest:And I will say to you out there, if you don't like movies spoiled, then you may have to turn today's episode off.
Guest:If you are desperately waiting to watch with fresh eyes,
Guest:The movie, the beekeeper, and you don't want to know anything about it in advance.
Guest:Well, I'm sorry.
Guest:We're going to spoil it today.
Guest:We're going to talk all about it.
Guest:My hope is that I will dissuade you from ever watching it.
Guest:But Chris, I think we'll hope that you will love how this is coming across and turn it on as soon as it's done.
Guest:But yeah, cards on the table.
Guest:I absolutely hated this.
Guest:Hated it.
Guest:Oh, hated it.
Guest:Hated it with a passion.
Guest:And I'm very willing to talk about why.
Guest:So here's what I think we should do.
Guest:If you remember, I've tasked you when we watched Madam Web with just basically to the best of your ability, trying to tell the story of the beekeeper, right?
Guest:I think I should do that with this one.
Guest:I think I, because I tried to not write down anything while I watched it.
Guest:I took a couple of notes, but I tried to stay as in the moment as possible.
Guest:And I'm going to try through recall to say what this movie was and what fucking happened in it.
Guest:I can't wait.
Guest:All right.
Guest:I will say that from the start of this thing, my heart sank a bit because I see the credits and it says it's a film by David Ayer.
Marc:Yeah, I know.
Marc:You got to move past that.
Guest:Well, but here's the problem.
Guest:He's not garbagey enough.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Like he's, he made end of watch.
Guest:He made fury with Brad Pitt.
Guest:He wrote training day.
Marc:He also made the suicide squad though.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:But like, so he's fallen off, but he's got capabilities, right?
Guest:Like this is not like you see, like, you know, Oh, Rennie Harlan, he makes shit.
Guest:Awesome.
Guest:You know, it's nothing.
Guest:It's like, okay.
Guest:But then also the other thing about David Ayer is,
Guest:He was like a submarine guy in the Navy.
Guest:His stuff is pretty conservative coded.
Guest:He has a lot of copaganda in all his movies.
Guest:So now I'm a little worried.
Guest:I'm like, am I going to watch this fucking MAGA movie here?
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:I will say I had a bit of relief moments later when I see that the movie is written by Kurt Wimmer.
Guest:kurt wimmer is possibly one of the worst screenwriters working today gets a lot of work but you will know him for or you will not know him because these movies are terrible from the total recall remake or the point break remake or expendables four or law-abiding citizen with gerard butler don't even know that one
Guest:Oh, I mean, this is this is like a guy who's just like a hunk of brain meat that like just there's I knew like right away, like I was like, oh, there's gonna be no coherent politics to this thing or anything.
Guest:And there wasn't like there was no like it's it's weird.
Guest:The definitely like the conservative edge of things is there, but no more than like Batman is conservative, right?
Guest:Like a vigilante justice thing.
Guest:Like anything that's like attempted to like have political relevance, which there's direct political stuff in this movie.
Guest:It's out of Mars, right?
Guest:right?
Guest:Like it has nothing to do with anything real.
Guest:So like you can, you can sweep away.
Guest:Like it's the, it's, it's a, it's a non informed person's version of like what a QAnon conspiracy might be.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Like a deep state thing, but like,
Guest:from a person who never read one word of any of it.
Guest:They just like, they got a whiff in passing that like people talk about like a deep state or like, you know, uh, secret societies and that.
Guest:And they just like made this shit up on the spot.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I mean, look, the movie is like cotton candy where when you try to touch it, it just like dissolves, you know?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But it dissolves into feces.
Yeah.
Marc:No, I think it's sticky sweet, like honey.
Marc:Oh, there are so many B metaphors.
Guest:All right.
Guest:Can I ask you something, though?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:What are your existing feelings?
Guest:I don't mean from this movie, but your existing feelings about Jason Statham.
Marc:I like him in the fast movies.
Marc:However, that's the only real exposure I have to him.
Marc:Like I don't, I wasn't a crank person or, you know, anything else that he's ever done.
Marc:So I have very limited exposure to him.
Guest:I'd say I have limited, but I would say it's limited on purpose because I'm not sold on him.
Guest:Like, he reads as very Jean-Claude Van Damme to me.
Guest:Like, a guy who is good at a particular thing, right?
Guest:Like, he's got this, like, you know, they put him in those Guy Ritchie movies.
Guest:He could fight well enough because he had martial arts training.
Guest:And he, you know, strikes a kind of bruiser figure from his, you know, athletic background.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But as a performer, he's like particularly limited and they're always asking him to not be limited.
Guest:Like the way they would do that with Jean-Claude Van Damme, like, no, now you're John McClane.
Guest:And it's like, no, this is some guy who can barely speak English.
Guest:Like don't make him do that.
Guest:And like, obviously Jason Statham can speak English, but like, it's never good.
Guest:Like there's, there's a very Jean-Claude Van Damme moment early on in this movie where a character says to him, like,
Guest:hmm i sense a little uh english aisles in your accent and i'm like a little that's the only thing in his accent the whole thing like what are you talking about there was always a scene in every jean-claude van damme movie where they tried to justify where he was from based on his oh so you sound like you're cajun you know like every movie like they're trying to justify it so that he's not always from brussels
Guest:Oh, he came over across the Canadian border.
Guest:He must be French Canadian, you know?
Guest:So, so, okay.
Guest:So that's another thing coming into this movie.
Guest:Like I'm already not sold on Statham.
Guest:One of the other reasons I'm not sold on Statham is apparent right away.
Guest:So like the first, okay, I will now start with my attempt to try to explain the beekeeper, which again, all I knew was political thriller, goofy.
Guest:And,
Guest:I assumed beekeeper was a code name for something, which I guess it is.
Guest:But also he's a real beekeeper.
Guest:In fact, he is, he spends the first 10 minutes of this movie doing nothing but beekeeping.
Guest:Like he's keeping the hell out of bees.
Guest:And you're like seeing all this.
Guest:He's very like, you know,
Guest:explanatory about what he's doing with bees.
Guest:And he's like, it's, it's a, he, he is a real deal, honey collecting beekeeper.
Guest:And he is on the property of Claire Huxtable there in farm country in somewhere in Massachusetts.
Guest:So like, okay, that's another thing.
Guest:If you're in a farm in Massachusetts, you're in like Western mass or somewhere.
Guest:Like you're, you're not, you're not near Boston.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You're not like right outside of a city.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So he's somewhere in deep isolation.
Guest:Talk about being isolated.
Guest:He's somewhere deep isolated in Massachusetts, living on Claire Huxtable's land for a reason we don't really know.
Guest:And then right away, I see my one of my biggest problems with Statham is that he is tiny.
Guest:Yeah, he's a small man.
Guest:And so they have to contrive.
Guest:He's like, remember in Lord of the Rings when they put Gandalf next to Frodo and they have to do a forced perspective thing so that you didn't realize they're the same size as humans?
Guest:That's what they're doing at the beginning of this movie with Claire Huxtable and Jason Statham.
Guest:He's on a hill looking down to Claire.
Guest:I guarantee she's taller than him.
Guest:Guaranteed.
Marc:It was a really weirdly blocked shot.
Guest:That's the only real thing I could pay attention to.
Guest:I'm like, I would do everything you can to not reveal this dude's actual height.
Marc:For me, I was like, well, was this made during COVID?
Marc:Were they trying to keep six feet distance?
Guest:Like, why are they so...
Marc:It's so bizarre.
Marc:Weird blocking, I admit.
Marc:Yes.
Guest:All right.
Guest:So it makes clear that she's the only person who's ever taken care of him, which it's like she lets him keep bees on her property in exchange for honey.
Guest:That's what you could get away with understanding, right?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And he's also living there, right?
Guest:That's right.
Guest:He lives in the garage.
Guest:He keeps bees.
Guest:You don't know anything else.
Guest:You don't know how he showed up.
Guest:You never do.
Marc:No.
Guest:Just know that he's there and he lives on this farm.
Guest:So, she goes into how she's on her computer.
Guest:She is trying to do something.
Guest:You don't even know what.
Guest:And she gets, like, a pop-up that says your computer is infected.
Guest:Standard elderly person scam.
Guest:She clicks it.
Guest:It goes to a call center that is, like...
Guest:This is like a club, but like everyone in there is acting like it's the Wolf of Wall Street, right?
Guest:Yes.
Guest:It's counter to any idea of a call center that's scamming people you've ever heard of.
Guest:It's in India or whatever.
Marc:A lot of uplighting.
Guest:Totally.
Guest:And it's lit like it's a house party.
Guest:And the guy is just doing a blatant Leo ripoff from the Wolf of Wall Street as they scam this lady.
Yes.
Guest:to you know touch all of her accounts and they zero out all of her savings right she puts her head in her hands and whatever in the end of the scene you go back to more beekeeping and he's making honey and whatever he comes down to the house and he's got a jar of honey to give to her the fire alarm is going off inside the house and uh the door is open so he goes in immediately grabs a knife and
Guest:And as one does sees a gun on the floor.
Guest:And then now somebody, Oh, by the way, he walks into this house.
Guest:I beg of you to go back and watch just this part where he walks into this house and his head is touching the door frame.
Guest:And I was like, that's a big fucking lie.
Marc:There is no way.
Guest:Maybe they got a tiny house.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Like they are in a doll's house.
Guest:If his head is touching the door frame.
Yeah.
Guest:So then a gun is pulled on him.
Guest:Freeze.
Guest:Put your hands where I could see him.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And he drops a knife.
Guest:And then he sees that everyone sees this person who's pulled the gun on him sees as well that Claire Huxtable has killed herself because of grief over losing all this money.
Guest:Much of it was charity money that she was managing.
Guest:Yes.
Yes.
Guest:And very extreme that she just blew her brains out before she called any law enforcement or anything.
Marc:I mean, I feel like that was like, we missed the step there.
Marc:Like, what are you doing?
Marc:You should call anyone, you know, call your daughter, apparently.
Guest:Yeah, so the person who has pulled the gun...
Guest:Is her daughter who is an FBI agent.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So, yes, she should have gotten called one.
Guest:They don't also set up that they're estranged or anything like she does talk about how she liked the brother more.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Than her.
Guest:But it's not like we never talk anymore.
Guest:Like she's there.
Guest:She's showing up at her mom's house to say hi or whatever.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So then they all figure out like, oh, what happened?
Guest:And she got scammed out of the money and it was a suicide.
Marc:Well, wait, wait.
Marc:So wait, we find out that this is the reason why she killed herself because...
Marc:the mom's bank account websites are still open and idle.
Marc:You can see, oh, look, she has no money anymore.
Marc:It's like, what bank lets you just be idle for hours at a time?
Guest:That's the least of the problems.
Guest:What bank lets you zero everything out without also immediately flagging Homeland Security?
Guest:That's why we have those things in place.
Guest:Chris, the least of this movie's concerns.
Guest:So now we're sitting the next day at the table with the beekeeper whose name is Adam Clay, although it's just an alias we're led to believe.
Guest:We find out later that he basically has no name.
Guest:But he is the beekeeper here in this situation who, as I said, speaks only in bee metaphors.
Guest:Apparently everything is about the hive and about the, you know, and he's sitting there getting increasingly furious over the fact that the, the, this old person was scammed out of all of her money and that this group that did it is doing it to other old people who are to him more vulnerable than children.
Guest:Like that was his, that's like the weird, weird thing.
Guest:He says,
Guest:and if you told me that this movie was put out and financed by aarp yeah i would be like yeah that tracks like it's like uh it's like reefer madness for aarp and he uh he's telling this to the fbi daughter who's like well there's nothing we can do about it because our defense attorney here's like the conservative shit that seeps in all the time the the law won't help her and the
Guest:a defense attorney will just use some excuse to get him, get him off.
Guest:And,
Guest:So he's like, okay.
Guest:He storms away.
Guest:He says, I got to go tend to the hive.
Guest:He's not talking about his beehive, we find out.
Guest:He's talking about planet Earth.
Guest:He tends to the hive of the United States, I guess.
Guest:And he goes to his beehive and bee boxes in the field, pulls out a cell phone that's in cellophane in one of the honeycombs,
Guest:and calls it and it immediately gets through to some like secret layer where uh there's a person on the phone who's like i thought you retired and he's like well i did but now i gotta find somebody you gotta find somebody who doesn't want to be found and she's like oh that's easy i can do this and uh i'll call you back so he goes off they call him back she's like yeah pretty tough that was a hard one
Guest:but has found this call center group, right?
Guest:That, that did the scam.
Guest:All right.
Guest:Some, for some reason, this call center is like in driving distance to where he is.
Guest:Naturally.
Guest:Why local?
Guest:Wait, like this thing could have been anywhere.
Guest:They could have been calling someone anywhere.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Why did they call a place right in their town?
Guest:And they don't want to be identified.
Guest:They're also just operating in a building.
Guest:They're not in some secret area.
Guest:This part is so big.
Guest:bewildering that somehow like this had to be traced.
Guest:Like, I feel like throughout then the rest of the movie, everybody just immediately knows who these people are.
Guest:This United data group, like, Oh yeah.
Guest:United data group.
Guest:It's like, why did this secret person have such a hard time locating them?
Marc:Right.
Guest:When everyone knows what this thing is and it's right there.
Guest:He drives to it for in his Ford pickup truck.
Marc:Really shitty pickup truck.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, and so, okay.
Guest:So he drives there, he shows up, the security guards come out to stop him and he like jokingly tells him, I go, I'm just going to get in there anyway.
Guest:I'm going to burn the whole place down.
Guest:And, uh, you know, here's what I'm going to do.
Guest:And then like just kills them immediately and then goes in and does that.
Guest:He like blows the place up.
Marc:Well, first of all, this call center, again, lots of stuff going on there, a lot of uplighting, but they also have like the villain from the latest Mission Impossible on the TV, like the entity.
Marc:I don't know if you ever saw that, but just like- Connecting everything.
Marc:Yes, this weird AI that's just like staring at us.
Guest:That's how they're like just finding old people.
Guest:They find old people everywhere, you know, and get money from them.
Guest:So, okay, he burns this place to the ground.
Guest:But the bad guy or the guy who's leading the call center, he gets away.
Guest:And he goes and he finds some thugs.
Guest:He calls a dude who's apparently his boss, who's a guy from the Hunger Games.
Guest:And he's like a crypto bro.
Guest:And the crypto bro who lives in a mansion or whatever, he's like, well, just go take care of this guy, whatever.
Guest:And so this bad guy goes, he finds a bunch of thugs.
Guest:They very easily drive around and find, they're driving around to, they're like, okay, this has to be someone we scammed coming for revenge.
Guest:Like they know that already.
Guest:So they, from the location they're in, drive around.
Guest:And immediately find Claire Huxtaple's house.
Guest:Like this was supposed to be an, like an international crime ring that we find out later.
Guest:That's just finding that's calling from all over.
Guest:And somehow they, not only did he find them right away, they then found him in return just by driving around drive, drove to like places.
Guest:They, they scam people again.
Guest:Why did they scam someone so nearby to them?
Guest:They could have scammed anywhere in the world.
Guest:So they drive there, they see the truck, they go to get him and he kills all of them.
Guest:Uh, very unsatisfyingly.
Guest:I will say that until there's one final fight in this movie, that's pretty good.
Guest:Very unsatisfying fights and kills.
Guest:One of the reasons why I have no love for this movie.
Guest:Cause like at least these movies should elevate that part of it.
Guest:Like at least do something completely insane and grizzly, like a Schwarzenegger movie where you like, you know, spear a guy through the stomach and tell him to stick around.
Yeah.
Marc:Well, the deaths in this movie are pretty good.
Guest:Oh, I did not find that at all.
Guest:I found them completely lackluster.
Marc:Really?
Marc:Yes.
Marc:Like you sawed off a guy's fingers.
Marc:They didn't die.
Marc:Strapped to a pickup truck and drove off a throw bridge.
Guest:That one was terrible.
Guest:And I'll tell you exactly why that was terrible.
Guest:Because they didn't go all the way with it.
Guest:He straps a dude to a truck and drives the truck off a bridge that the drawbridge is up on.
Guest:So the guy is strapped to it and there's a lot of rope, right?
Guest:That guy should have been dragged to smithereens across the asphalt.
Guest:He is not.
Guest:He just like bungees through the sky, like just off the bridge with the truck.
Guest:So he's just airborne, right?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Then he doesn't even splat.
Guest:Like you're expecting if he's in the air, flying through the air, splat him against the side of the bridge, which the truck is heading toward.
Guest:No, instead he just drowns.
Guest:He just falls into the war and drowns.
Guest:That one sucked.
Guest:And then beyond it sucking, it was all CGI.
Guest:This movie has bad CGI up and down it.
Guest:These movies need practical effects.
Guest:Right?
Guest:They only work if things are like really blowing up.
Guest:If there's squibs, if there's like a stunt man falling into plate glass, like that happened a couple of times.
Guest:That was fine.
Guest:But like the, this needs to be much more spectacular.
Guest:It is done mostly in a computer.
Guest:There's a part with a, with a rail gun that looks ridiculously stupid.
Guest:And that, that stuff made me angry, but the deaths were bad.
Guest:There's a point where he comes up on a dude with these guys who come to kill him.
Guest:and he immediately has him and has a screwdriver at the guy's eyeball and I'm like oh we're gonna get shish kebab eyeball here instead he puts the thing down grabs a chain like diehard style and chains the guy's neck and the guy goes up in the air and it's nothing I'm like wait a minute we had right in our fingertips here a beautiful grungy B movie bad guy death and they flitter it away
Marc:Yes, they did shy away from that.
Marc:But there was an exploding fire extinguisher that the guy hit him over the head with.
Marc:That fight was pretty good.
Guest:He's a fight later with a hand-to-hand.
Guest:Okay, so I'm going to go back on what I said.
Guest:And this perfectly lines up with Jason Statham.
Guest:Whenever it's hand-to-hand combat with one dude, it's pretty good.
Marc:Yeah, well, this movie does a lot of that.
Guest:They can stage those pretty well.
Marc:but but but i would say it has to be one dude because you know where it sucks when he fights 20 dudes black ninja style it's so silly yeah but like if he can choke out a guy on his skateboard no problem but like yeah when it's like a whole swat team that was yeah
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:When it's a whole SWAT team, it's like a bit unbelievable.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Like he's Batman all of a sudden.
Guest:Well, he is because apparently.
Guest:All right.
Guest:So now we get the plot moving.
Guest:He's going to go try to, he's going to try to kill all these call centers, blow up all the call centers.
Guest:And there's one in Boston.
Guest:So the FBI, this, this daughter of Claire Huxtable and her partners find out that he is, you know, moving toward Boston and he's going to do something there.
Guest:And we go to this guy,
Guest:The boss of the call centers, this tech bro, who is we find out his family's business is protected by the former head of the CIA, played by Jeremy Irons.
Guest:He has taken this private sector job to kind of be the head of security for this corporation.
Guest:and uh you know he's telling him i'm in a bunch of trouble you got to help me out and he says what what's the deal and the tech bro kid says i got this guy he says he's a beekeeper and he blew up one of my call centers and jeremy irons like well now you're dead you said to be a beekeeper well you're fucked you're totally fucked can't do anything about it you fucked up he's like what what did i do so jeremy irons like gets on the phone to the current head of the cia many drivers in the movie five seconds
Guest:Really weird.
Marc:She sure is.
Guest:No point for her to be there.
Guest:And she says, he says, we got a problem with a beekeeper, a rogue beekeeper off the rails.
Guest:And this is where it's not clear.
Guest:Is it like a Jedi thing or the Sith where there's only one at any given time?
Guest:Because he seems to be the one beekeeper who then retired and was replaced by another beekeeper.
Guest:Yeah, it's like popes.
Guest:Right, right, right, right.
Guest:They had a conclave for beekeepers.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:And because he says, oh, then they say, okay, send the other beekeeper after him.
Guest:And he says, when he meets her, when she shows up to kill him, he says, oh, you must be my replacement.
Guest:So I think there's only one.
Guest:But then they talk about it throughout the movie like there's a society of beekeepers, even though you never see any more beekeepers.
Right.
Marc:Yeah, it really, the mechanics of being a beekeeper sort of evolve throughout the movie.
Guest:Oh, do they ever?
Guest:Oh, oh, oh, do they ever?
Guest:We will get to that.
Marc:Also, so this guy is like a secret ninja, part of a secret organization called the Beekeepers.
Marc:Then he just retires to be an actual beekeeper.
Yeah.
Guest:Like, what's his first?
Guest:Was he a beekeeper first?
Guest:And they're like, you're so good at this.
Guest:We're going to train you to be the best fighter in the world.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Like, was he a beekeeper and you just found monster.com?
Marc:Like, oh, beekeeper position.
Marc:I'm going to apply for that.
Marc:Oh, no.
Guest:This is much different than I expected.
Guest:the flip side is just as weird that like no he's like been a ninja since birth he's basically like you know you cultivated him like as like you would do a ninja samurai or something like that and he was so into this idea of their code name that he was like when I'm done I'm gonna be a real fucking beekeeper
Guest:Like, either one is batshit crazy.
Guest:But I will say this.
Guest:The idea is, like you said, he's supposed to be... He's the Terminator.
Guest:He's the Terminator.
Guest:There's nothing that fucking hurts this guy, which also sinks the movie.
Guest:Because there's no vulnerability to him.
Guest:You are told he will... They tell you multiple times he will kill anyone that gets in his path to the point where...
Guest:if we send a large enough group of people after him, maybe he can't kill all of them in time.
Guest:He'll kill.
Guest:If you send 20 people after him, he'll kill maybe 19 and the 20th guy will get him.
Guest:Like that's, that's how indestructible he is.
Guest:Right?
Guest:So the replacement beekeeper shows up and he kills her in five seconds.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:She was the worst beekeeper I've ever seen.
Guest:And I haven't seen any other than him.
Yeah.
Marc:She's also... The villains of this movie are so technicolor, it's almost like they're out of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
Marc:It's like Bebop and Rocksteady.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Not only that, they're inexplicable.
Guest:You can't discern exactly what nationality they are.
Guest:You can't tell what...
Guest:their clothes represent in terms of matching the clothes that they like have on them.
Guest:Like there's no matching aesthetic to them.
Guest:Their weapons are weird there.
Guest:They have like facial hair that you've never seen before.
Guest:Like it's just,
Guest:all bizarre and it's from top down there's a guy who's like you know a government guy that he's got the weirdest voice i've ever heard in my life and i looked him up and it's like just some german actor that they shoved in this role so like they're like yeah you go be a navy seal right and he's like all right i should go we're going to find his breaking law i was like what
Guest:the fuck is this guy saying that guy sounded like the villain from uh rushmore you know the the bully in rushmore oh yeah yeah yeah exactly it's basically him he kills that other beekeeper and then the cia director tells jeremy irons uh yeah the beekeepers are gonna stay neutral in this
Guest:So we're on, you're on your own.
Guest:Right.
Guest:What?
Guest:And that's the last time you ever see Minnie Driver.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And, and can I just ask the beekeeping society?
Marc:So that's who he called.
Marc:And like, they're in some weird underground layer with really old computers, but they're still able to find the call center down the block.
Guest:Right.
Guest:She's using an Amiga.
Marc:Just the most baffling part is Jeremy Irons playing the former CIA director, who is, Jeremy Irons is very British in this movie.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:He barely, another guy, like, what's that accent you got there, pal?
Marc:Right, right.
Guest:Like, you were heading the CIA?
Marc:You.
Guest:Okay, okay.
Guest:So speaking of him, okay, so now he knows we're on our own.
Guest:So he goes and rounds up a wretched hive of scum and villainy.
Guest:He goes and finds a bunch of like badass dudes who are either, yeah, like ex-Navy SEALs or black ops or whatever, and puts them all in a room.
Guest:And now is the big moment.
Guest:We're finally going to hear that.
Guest:This is the Raiders of the Lost Ark map room scene where they're going to explain everything, right?
Guest:Totally.
Guest:So here, finally, what are the beekeepers?
Guest:Okay, I'm going to read a couple of things that he said.
Right.
Guest:He says, our nation is not unlike a beehive with its complex system of workers, caretakers, even royalty.
Guest:If any of the beehive's complex mechanisms are compromised, the hive collapses.
Guest:All right.
Guest:So it's just, you know, keeping order.
Guest:Got to keep balance.
Guest:Keep order.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:Someone a long time ago decided that a mechanism was needed to keep our nation safe, a mechanism outside the chain of command, outside the system.
Guest:It's one mission to keep the system safe.
Guest:All right.
Guest:A beekeeper.
Guest:I get it.
Guest:Going to keep this hive safe.
Guest:Then he says,
Guest:Beekeepers are given all resources, empowered to act on their own judgment.
Guest:For decades, they have worked quietly to keep the hive safe.
Guest:That is, until now.
Guest:I would say pause here for a second.
Guest:Well, he's describing a beekeeper keeping this hive that's got all these mechanisms and complex series of interconnected elements and someone above it keeping it safe.
Guest:Like, that's the beekeeper society, right?
Guest:Right.
Guest:They're the beekeeper, right?
Guest:Right.
Guest:Like, a beekeeper is standing over the hive, you know, blowing smoke on it and keeping everything.
Guest:And not in the hive.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Right?
Guest:Right.
Guest:So he says, it appears that a retired beekeeper has gone off program and is acting in what he mistakenly believes is the hive's best interest.
Guest:And now this guy with the weird voice says, why doesn't somebody just tell this guy to stand down?
Guest:And he's like, he won't stand down.
Guest:Beekeepers will keep working until they die.
Guest:wait a minute wait a second no no they don't i have notes like like i said at the beginning i don't know any beekeepers but i'm pretty sure they're on a regular employment plan like they don't work until they die like they're not like jerry you don't remember jerry oh man that guy it was sad but that honey was fucking good man
Guest:So then he also says his goal is to kill his way to the top of the hive.
Guest:This is the first time I wrote something down while I was watching this movie.
Guest:And I will read exactly what I wrote down.
Guest:What was it?
Guest:I wrote, is he a beekeeper or a bee?
Guest:Right.
Guest:Because I think this movie is totally confused.
Guest:And he is a bee.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Like the movie should have just been called the bee because that's everything he does from this point on.
Guest:You can't unsee it either.
Guest:Everything he does is in actions representing a bee.
Guest:So then not, and it's not just him.
Guest:The very next scene is the FBI agent reading a book on bees.
Guest:She's not reading a book on beekeeping.
Guest:She's reading a book on bees and she's saying to the partner, you know, these facts about bees.
Guest:They're fascinating.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So now everybody's on board with this idea that we need to know how bees act, not how beekeepers act.
Guest:And the other thing, this becomes very important.
Guest:They're like, oh, there's a thing in the beehive that one bee is called the queenslayer because if the queen is not putting out good offspring, the queenslayer bee will actually kill the queen in the hive.
Guest:And then you move on to another colony.
Guest:yes well wouldn't you know our bad guy happens to be the son of the president of the united states that's the big political twist of this movie this one of reveal yes done very poorly by the way like like it was it was uh flat as hell to see the way that this woman is revealed as the president like she should have been in the fucking oval office yes right yes
Marc:Yeah, she's just shaking hands with some people with flags behind her.
Guest:Yeah, and someone briefly says, oh, Madam President, right?
Guest:Like, no, you need to have the president.
Guest:You'd be very clear about this.
Marc:Yeah, this movie feels like they were making the runway as they were building the plane to take off.
Marc:It's all just...
Guest:they barely got it in the air i would say arguably got it in the air so okay the entire climax of this movie then is that the beekeeper or i'm just gonna call him the bee at this point the bee is going
Guest:to kill the queen, the president, because, or at least that's what, you know, everyone is assuming because now he is going after the son who ran these call centers and, you know, he's blown up another one in Boston.
Guest:Big fight scene there.
Guest:Also...
Guest:He's very, they're very clear.
Guest:It's very much like, you know, how George Lucas wanted you to be sure that like, oh, they're not killing innocent civilians like Jay and Silent Bob said, you know, in when they blow up the Death Star.
Guest:These are clones or robots, right?
Guest:So this movie makes it very clear that when there's actual law enforcement sent after him, he doesn't kill them.
Guest:He shoots them in bulletproof vests or kneecaps them or whatever.
Guest:But if it's a mercenary, that dude's fucking dead.
Guest:Like that guy gets his head ripped off.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So, uh, again, the kind of like a weird, uh, politically coded environment of this movie.
Guest:Uh, but so, yes, so now he's heading to a beach house party that the, that the son of the president is holding at her, like, I guess like, you know, Camp David type of place.
Guest:Right.
Marc:That, that fucking party looked awesome.
Marc:By the way, there were just a bunch of fucking magicians in that house.
Guest:It was like one of Billy Madison's parties.
Guest:like yes like when he graduates the third grade so so he go to so and and okay he has to sneak into this party multiple times like because like there's several layers so he has to first pose as a secret service agent right versus first he poses as part of like a uh he's a mechanic because he's down underneath a truck and
Guest:He sneaks under the truck.
Guest:He gets under it.
Guest:Then he chokes a dude out, steals his secret service costume.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Then he gets to the building and undoes the costume.
Guest:And now he's just walking around as like suit on.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:A guy in a suit.
Guest:He's a party goer.
Guest:And at every step of this movie, again, because he's invincible, another major problem with the film is,
Guest:uh you know he just has no problem showing everyone where he is like he walks into the party catches like deliberately catches the eye of the fbi agents and is like waves to them nods and makes them come chase him why did you need to sneak into the fucking place then like
Guest:This guy has, he's walked into five buildings already and blown them sky high.
Guest:And he like tells the people as he walks into them, I'm going to do this.
Marc:So I'm going to walk in, I'm going to blow it up and you can't do anything to stop me because I'm the B. In that scene, after he nods to the FBI and then they go and chase him, they, they tell him the freeze and they literally like, the guy turns around and it's, it's like his stunt double.
Marc:It's like the gag from Spaceballs.
Marc:Like,
Marc:It's like, oh, you idiots.
Marc:It's this stuntable.
Marc:They have to go chase him down again.
Marc:Oh my God.
Guest:So yes, he gets away because he blowed something up and it's a big fight and chase.
Guest:And this, this is the part where I thought it had a very satisfying fight scene, but way too late and way like it was, it was, they lacked believability because now he's been so invulnerable through the whole movie that when he's finally fighting a big dude hand to hand who is stabbing him, uh,
Guest:You're still like, well, he shouldn't get hurt by this.
Guest:He doesn't get hurt by anything.
Guest:And it's like it reminds me of that Indiana Jones thing where it's like the most successful thing about Indiana Jones is that he takes an ass kicking all the time.
Guest:Like one of the great things is that like when he punches that mechanic and the mechanic doesn't feel it, he slumps.
Guest:He's like, oh, yes.
Guest:like you know that's the key to a hero you need to like feel some vulnerability there like even superman you know superman is vulnerable because he cares too much right and they give him a vulnerability this you know mcguffin kryptonite right so like all characters have this not this guy this guy from start to finish he's going to go do that like there's literally nothing that happens in the movie that changes the course of the movie he's pissed that claire huxtable got killed he's going to
Guest:Find out who did it.
Guest:He finds out he goes and kills them.
Guest:End of movie.
Guest:It happens to be the son of the president.
Guest:He shoots over the shoulder of the president, blows this guy's head off.
Guest:And oh, by the way, you found out that the call centers were all being run to fund her presidential campaign.
Marc:that's right uh that's another big twist which i feel like they think has like political relevance it does not it has it means nothing but it was a great bit of uh of dialogue like you don't understand i i i went out and i i found all these votes for you with this software yeah it's just like okay sure that's not how this works but okay yeah
Guest:so when the movie ends it ends with beekeeper leaving and the fbi agent like lets him go although nothing she could do about it what was she gonna do shoot at him he'd eat the bullet and spit it back at her with more bullets like there's no there's no way to kill this guy so so he goes he leaves still somehow has to sneak away he has a a scuba suit buried off uh site and he could just get in that and swim away and
Marc:Oh, dude, I have a bunch of scuba suits buried in various shorelines.
Marc:I'm hoping no one finds them.
Guest:I kind of just wanted him to have to dig three holes because he wasn't exactly sure exactly where it was.
Marc:God damn it.
Marc:Bedside table on the drawer.
Marc:Like, where's my scuba suit?
Marc:Yes.
Guest:and and also i would also say by the end of it there's they they lose any b anything like he stops talking about b stuff he doesn't talk about the hive he doesn't go back to the hive or nothing now he's just in the water now he's aquaman so like the b thing kind of goes away i think they buzz the screen with one final b before it ends as the credits come up yeah uh
Guest:So my feeling is that this was not fun enough to recommend as even a goof.
Guest:And it was competently done, but in the way that most of these things get competently done and wind up looking inauthentic.
Guest:Like, I would rather a fake-looking dummy get tossed off a building than a CGI guy fall down an elevator shaft.
Marc:I still think it was good fun.
Marc:Like, it was good, clean fun.
Marc:Like, we had fun.
Marc:No?
Guest:This was way more fun than the movie, talking about it with you.
Guest:So if that's your idea of a good time, it can work.
Guest:If you have a buddy like Chris that you can just bullshit about something about, hey, watch it together.
Guest:Sit on your couch.
Guest:Your booze don't need nobody.
Guest:Watch this with a couple of beers.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Enjoy.
Guest:Fine.
Guest:I would not recommend for your precious free time, you sit at home alone watching the beekeeper hoping to be enriched by it.
Guest:But Chris, I think you probably also did the right thing by watching this on an airplane.
Marc:Oh, man.
Marc:Yeah, I couldn't get away from it.
Marc:And I enjoyed my mediocre food with my mediocre movie.
Marc:And I just thought it was a good movie.
Marc:I think it's perfect on Tubi.
Marc:It's a Tubi movie.
Guest:Well, that's probably true, although I think you will also find better, sleazier stuff on Tubi that you could enjoy even more than this.
Guest:But I will say two non-Tubi movies are True Grit and Sex, Lies, and Videotape.
Guest:Those are the picks that Chris and I have for movies that either of us have never seen, and we will talk about them next week.
Guest:And, you know, if you have suggestions of things that you want to hear us talk about, particularly movies, because we've been doing a lot of that lately and it seems like everybody enjoys it.
Guest:So send that to us by clicking on the link in the comment section.
Guest:And I hope you had a very happy Thanksgiving.
Guest:Enjoy the rest of this weekend.
Guest:Until next time, I'm Brendan and that is Chris.
Peace.