Stellead Don't listen to the Hype. It's awful

Comwayon A Disappointing Continuation

Matrixiole Simple and well acted, it has tension enough to knot the stomach.

StyleSk8r At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

The Movie Diorama It was proof that motion blur techniques and complex 3D objects could be used against a partially rendered background. This was the birth of the greatest animation studio currently working today. The seed that enabled The Graphics Group to form, what is now known as, Pixar. Therefore automatically assigning this animation short as an important part of animation history. A refreshing new method into filmmaking, especially back in 1984. Colourful 3D shapes conjoined together to create models. Unfortunately though, its conceptual proof does not make for an engaging story...or anything engaging for that matter. A man/creature/thing gets chased by a bee. Simple. Totalling at less than two minutes long, it contains no characterisation, interactivity or memorability. Nearly a third of the short itself is introductory and closing credits, consequently leaving approximately one minute to establish some sort of entertainment. Too bad it fell flat. The primary focus for innovation meant that its actual purpose as entertainment was lost. However I appreciate the technical prowess and astute innovation, acting as a stepping stone for the pinnacle company of animation that we know and love today.

Tejas Nair There is no story at all, and if you were to extract one, you would end up with an inconclusive bag of poorly written lines.What the story talks about is the pursuit of a bee to sting its prey, who seems to be a clever guy. Then a chase begins only to make the audience disappointed at the end. The one minute short makes no sense at all and after that last frame, I was still expecting some inference.Talking about the animation, I would say it is a lousy one and taking in account the year of release, it works fine. But with a shallow story and no message, kids might take a gander and give out a wry smile. Poor!

voxhumana This is an extraordinary and historic film, however viewers should not assess this film by the standards of current animation, but rather in its (truly ground-breaking) historical context. This film is the CG animation equivalent of the first flight of the Wright Brothers (which lasted only 12 seconds). Much like that famous first flight in 1903, this 1984 film paved the way for all that has followed. It is not the first CG animation ever made, but it is the first to feature a plot, characterization and expression, motion blur, and deformations (eg stretching, squashing). When it was demonstrated at the 1984 SIGGRAPH there was a crowd response bordering on hysteria, as nothing even close to this had ever been done before.So watch this film with appropriate awe and reverence, for it is the birthing of an entire new art form which we completely take for granted now.

RainDogJr From 1984, this short film was the first work that John Lasseter, Eben Ostby and Bill Reeves made as a team but it was made when they still were part of Lucasfilm. Basically is just the beginning of all so everything is quite limited. With only one and half minute this short film can't be more than just the very important and fantastic beginning of something. Is great to hear the commentary of the Blu-ray and now is fun to hear the fact that Lasseter and pals could only made geometric designs with their program. Still the could create two nice characters that are the protagonist of a "one joke" story and with that they could not only show a project that was new in matters of technology but at the same time they could put to it soul, they made that their colleagues didn't care about the fact that when the short was showed, in a very known event by them, was not even finished. It was something new, something different.This is the kind of stuff that if -TODAY- you are going to show to your girlfriend, for example, and she doesn't really know about it you really have to explain her everything behind it, make sure that she will not judge it just for how the animation looks or how funny was the story, make sure that she appreciate everything behind because and after all it is just a must-see important piece of work and for me it was absolutely great to finally watch it.