Maya the Bee review: well-meaning, well-voiced and entirely devoid of character

We will not tarry long in addressing this German-Australian-Belgian co-production's strengths as half-term family entertainment. Apparently animated on a 1982 ZX Spectrum, Maya the Bee is well-meaning, competently voiced and entirely devoid of any distinctive character.

Maya, raised in the disciplined hive, conspires with her lazy but amiable pal Willy to restore a deposed queen to the throne. Along the way, she learns about tolerance, responsibility and all the other stuff that holds liberal democracies together.

It will be no tiny child's favourite film, but few tykes will hold any lasting grudge against the deadbeat dad who deposits them with Maya while he sits through Sicario again.

Maya the Bee may, however, be among the most interesting cultural phenomena of the week. The film appears (admirably, if less than subtly) to encourage children not to accept simplistic, bigoted assumptions about people from other cultures.

In this world, bee parents tell smaller bees that hornets are fierce creatures intent on annihilating their honey-centric society. Elsewhere, Mr and Mrs Hornet are indoctrinating wee Biff and Brenda Hornet with similarly terrifying myths concerning the harmless bees. You won’t need to be told that Maya makes friends with a little hornet and precipitates a new entomological entente.

Now hear this. The 1912 German source novel (Die Biene Maja) was, apparently, a militaristic allegory that used the story to genuinely warn against the imminent arrival of racially impure Auslanders.

Author Waldemar Bonsels was later a supporter of Hitler and contributed anti-Semitic tracts to the cause.

None of which is meant to trigger a boycott. Quite the reverse. There’s something irresistibly charming about a project that is prepared to suck the venom from a racist text and turn it into an avatar of humanism. Better this sort of German-Belgian collision than the less happy misunderstandings between those countries 70 years ago.

Somebody needs to write a PhD thesis on this right away.