Review: 'Secret Life Of Bees'
By JAKE COYLE
AP Entertainment Writer
Published: November 28, 2008
"The Secret Life Of Bees" teases with
talent. How can a movie populate a house
with Queen Latifah, Alicia Keys and
Jennifer Hudson and NOT give us a song?
Though the cast might suggest a musical,
"The Secret Life of Bees" is an earnest,
saccharine adaptation of Sue Monk Kidd's
best-selling 2002 novel, brought to the
big screen by director Gina
Prince-Bythewood ("Love & Basketball").
The novel, set in South Carolina in 1964,
came out of nowhere to sell millions in
paperback, so this adaptation arrives
with much anticipation from its readers.
Of course, placating such ardent fans has
doomed more than a few movies of beloved
books.
The film stays close to the novel in
telling the story of Lily Owens (Dakota
Fanning), a 14-year-old girl who runs
away from an abusive father who makes her
kneel painfully on grits for the
slightest mischief. Lily flees with her
caretaker Rosaleen Daise (Hudson), who
has reason to flee after she's beaten by
a man in a racist confrontation and
arrested.
Lily ultimately is looking to find out
more about her mother, who died when Lily
was a toddler during a fight with her
husband — apparently because of a gun
Lily accidentally discharges.
"She was all I wanted and I took her
away," Lily narrates. "Nothing else much
mattered."
But whatever Lily's inner anguish, she
doesn't much show it. Fanning plays her
with a modern teenager's swagger and
self-involvement, making it hard to
empathize with her plight.
Rosaleen follows young Lily like she's
the elder, and the two end up
serendipitously at the "Caribbean
pink"-painted house of the Boatwright
sisters, each named after a month: August
(Latifah), June (Keys) and May (Sophie
Okonedo).
The 1964 milieu of the film is one where
violence lurks everywhere, even though
President Johnson has just signed the
Civil Rights Act into law. Tristan Wilds
— who some will recognize from his
powerful performance on HBO's "The Wire"
— plays Zach Taylor, a black teenager
whose optimism is shaken when he's
abducted for sitting with Lily at the
local cinema (to see "Surf Party").
But the Boatwright household is an oasis,
presided over by Latifah's motherly
August, the queen bee of the hive. She is
all smiles and love and rainbows, and she
teaches Lily how to farm honey from their
bee colonies.
"Above all, send the bees love," she
tells Lily. "Every living thing wants to
be loved."
Okonedo's May is a distraught wreck who
goes to tears at the slightest mention of
harm. Both she and Latifah aren't served
well by their one-dimensional characters.
Keys, however, is by far the most
riveting thing in the film. All distrust
and uptight anger, she plays June with a
tension the movie can't find anywhere
else — in the plot, in Lily, even in the
early '60s racial turmoil.
This is only Keys' third film and, for
the part, she's traded in her piano for a
cello. But she nevertheless looks right
at home. Keys dominates the screen enough
to wonder if she might have a second
career — hopefully one with better movies
than "Bees" or her first film, "Smokin'
Aces."
The Boatwright sisters and Rosaleen are a
kind of rehab of loving care for Lily;
this is ultimately her story. Her
mother's past eventually becomes
illuminated and Lily begins to find her
identity thanks to the sisters — "the
moons shining over me."
In the book, the bees have a metaphorical
significance throughout, but here,
they're really just some bees in the
backyard. Instead, all we have is sugary
sweet ideas about life.
A Fox Searchlight release, "The Secret
Life of Bees" is rated PG-13 for thematic
material and some violence. Running time:
110 minutes. One and a half stars out of
four.
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