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Commentary

At first glance, this reads as a candid shot of some kind of bachelor party prank or European stag do gone delightfully wrong — middle-aged men in bee costumes swarming a poor guy trying to enjoy his cake. The café setting is convincing, the espresso cup and saucer feel authentic, and the emotional register of exaggerated male bonding humor is pitch-perfect. You could almost hear the laughter. But then you start counting fingers and things fall apart. The bald bee-man on the left has a hand making a gesture that suggests three fingers but the anatomy dissolves into suggestion. The hand reaching from the right appears to have a thumb emerging from an impossible position. And examine the fork-wielding hand more closely — the grip is confident, but the fingers attached to it don't quite commit to being discrete digits. The faces are the real success here — expressive, varied, individually ugly in the way real middle-aged men are. That's what sells it initially. The wings are cheap enough to be real costume pieces. It's the hands that couldn't hold up in court.