The Secret Life of Bees (Fox Searchlight)
Rated PG-13 for thematic material and some violence.
Starring Dakota Fanning, Queen Latifah, Alicia Keys, Jennifer Hudson, Sophie Okonedo, Paul Bettany, Tristan Wilds and Nate Parker.
Written by Gina Prince-Bythewood and Sue Monk Kidd.
Directed by Gina Prince-Bythewood.
GRADE: B
REVIEW
By Dan MetcalfI must confess that I'm quite the sappy guy when it comes to movies. In the dark of the theater, no one can tell if I get misty during a movie, and I can always say it's allergies. Because I'm somewhat emotional, that doesn't mean I enjoy the so-called 'chick-flick' by default. You have to earn my tears. Such is the case for
The Secret Life of Bees, the film adaptation of the popular 'Oprah's Book Club' novel.
The Secret Life of Bees is the story of Lilly (Dakota Fanning), a 14-year-old southern girl living in 1964 who longs to find out more about her mother. Lilly accidentally shot and killed her mother when she was a toddler during a scuffle with her abusive father, T Ray, played by Paul Bettany.
T. Ray runs a peach farm in the South, and when Rosaleen (Jennifer Hudson), an african-american peach farm employee picks a fight with the town racist bullies, she is falsely accused of a crime while trying to register to vote. Lilly helps her escape from police and the two set off on a trip to a town South Carolina because Lilly thinks her mother has some sort of connection to the place through an old honey jar label she left behind.
Lilly and Rosaleen arrive in Tiburon, S.C. and soon find the source of the honey label; a family of sisters who raise honey bees. The eldest sister August (played by Queen Laitifah) lives there with June (Alicia Keys) and May (Sophie Okonedo). The sisters and other women in the area practice some sort of quasi-Catholic religion through a folk tale of a 'black Madonna' statue they keep in their living room.
August allows Lilly and Rosaleen to stay on and help with the honey operation as all the women discover the true meaning of their lives during while dealing with the struggles of life during the civil rights movement.
If all this seems a little over-dramatic, you'd be right. The conflict in
Bees is full of dramatic twists that only Oprah faithful could love, and I'm sure it will do well among the 'chick-flick' crowds. It will rank up there with other female dramas like
Steel Magnolias, Fried Green Tomatoes, The Prince of Tides, and others. Such Drama in movies is a good thing, and I think we can all learn something about ourselves through film, but when the 'life lessons' have to be spelled out for us, it can seem a little forced. That's the only problem I had with
Bees; it annoys me when I have to be told when to cry. It would be better if such moments were left to subtle inward reflection rather than on screen, pass-the-tissue cue cards.
Dakota Fanning seems to be handling puberty well, and still has the acting chops to hold her own with likes of Latifah and Hudson on the screen. Bettany does a fine job as a red neck abuser and even has a few moments where the audience can feel sorry for him. The rest of the supercharged cast is fine as well, but Sophie Okonedo steals most of the scenes as the emotionally over-sensitive May.
If there's another case to made for avoiding
Bees, it's the presence of too much drama. If it were a story of a an adolescent girl's journey of inner-demons and self-discovery, that would be fine, but all the civil rights background makes for too much conflict in an already complicated tale. It seems like the Oprah crowd got a little too carried away, and oh yeah, Oscar season is on.
There is one moment in
Bees that is truly sad. It's when we learn that Lilly thinks she ruins everybody's lives and she is incapable of being loved, since her father is such a jerk and she killed her mom. I may have been a little choked up, but then again, I do have allergies.
