Bee Movie Game follows Barry B. Benson as he realizes working at Honex making honey isn't quite the job for him. So you will control Barry as he not only goes through the events of the movie (becoming a Pollen Jock, meeting humans, etc), but also try out tons of other jobs like pollen sorter, mechanic, race car driver and taxi driver. As you progress through the story, new jobs become available and completing these jobs earns you money you can use to buy cars or new outfits for Barry.
Each job is a mini-game that is typically fun to play, and offers something to do while you wait for the next story mission to unlock. Games like the pollen sorting will have you moving a tub left and right at the bottom of the screen trying to collect the non-burnt pollen as it falls down in a Plinko manner. Another game, the race-car driver, simply has you taking part in races of either the checkpoint or lap variety.
One of the things that really bothered me about this game is that I couldn't just go from story mission to story mission and run through the game, and use the open-world New Hive City as a place where I can go to take a break from the main events. Instead, after completing chapters, you are dumped into New Hive City and not given any kind of direction. You basically have to mill about the area taking part in jobs and buying stuff until some amount of time has passed and the game tells you the next mission is available. This was really aggravating because it made the between-mission times feel like a waste, and there where times when I thought "What if I don't want to try out a job."
On the flip side, I found a lot of the missions themselves to be fairly enjoyable. When you are outside of the hive, your character is buzzing along trying to collect pollen from some flowers and deposit it in other, wilted flowers. While performing your bee duties, you will be attacked by dragonflies and mosquitoes that are, funnily enough, allergic to pollen, so you use the same device you suck and deposit the pollen with as a weapon against the zooming bad guys.
There are other types of objectives, like following prompted inputs in order to stay out of danger (like the scene where you are stuck to the tennis ball that shows up in all the movie previews), or turning on your Bee Senses so you can dodge rain and get back to a safe area. Of all of the gameplay styles Bee Movie Game presented, I found the pollen gathering events to be the most fun.