The Secret Life of Bees
Movie Review
"The Secret Life of Bees"
Review by Eric D. Snider
Grade: C+
Rating: PG-13
Released: Friday, October 17, 2008
Directed by:
Cast:
The main thing I learned from "The Secret Life of Bees" is that forcing your disobedient daughter to kneel down, barelegged, on a pile of uncooked grits is mean and painful.
But obscure punishments enacted by abusive Southerners are not the main point of "The Secret Life of Bees." Surely the only reason I would start my review with it is that the film doesn't really offer much else to talk about.
Directed and adapted by Gina Prince-Bythewood, who made the well-liked "Love and Basketball" several years ago, "Secret Life" falls under the category of Well-Meaning Movies That Were Probably Much Better As Books. In Sue Monk Kidd's novel, the home-fried, honey-flavored tale of a lonely white girl finding refuge in a black family of beekeepers in South Carolina in 1964 probably seems less precious and more realistic than it does in Prince-Bythewood's shiny, gauzy version.
Lemme break it down for you one time. Fourteen-year-old Lily (Dakota Fanning) flees her abusive, unloving father (Paul Bettany) and takes the housekeeper, Rosaleen (Jennifer Hudson), a young woman who's been Lily's surrogate mom, with her. They head to a town that Lily knows her mother (who died when Lily was 4) once had a connection to, and are struck by a display of locally made honey called Black Madonna. A black Virgin Mary? On a jar of honey? What is up with THAT?
Feeling spiritually drawn, Lily and Rosaleen visit the family that makes the honey. (Well, the bees make it. The family puts it in bottles.) These are the Boatwrights, consisting of three sisters: motherly August (Queen Latifah), no-nonsense June (Alicia Keys), and simple-minded May (Sophie Okonedo).
August, June, and May? Shouldn't there be an April too?!!
Well, there was an April, and she died. There, don't you feel like a jerk now?
August welcomes Lily and Rosaleen to stay with them as long as necessary, putting them to work with the beekeeping and honey-jarring. Meanwhile, the Civil Rights Acts has just been passed, and racial tensions in this small, dusty town are running high. Lily's friendship with August's godson, Zach (Tristan Wilds), is problematic. Et cetera.
Hey! Did you know that you can learn a lot about life in general simply by observing the rules of beekeeping? Did you also know that beehives can be symbolic of other things, forming the basis of plainly spoken platitudes and folk wisdom? It's true!
The actors are all earnest and committed, except maybe for Paul Bettany, who quite rightly doesn't seem to know what he's doing in this movie. Sophie Okonedo is stuck in a thankless part, i.e., the smiling simpleton, but she does what she can. More notable is Alicia Keys, who adds the right amount of frostiness to balance Queen Latifah's open, lovable performance as August. In addition, Jennifer Hudson, breaking out of her "Dreamgirls" diva persona, shows more range than I thought she had.
Dakota Fanning, who is the same age as her character, continues to give phenomenal performances even in mediocre films. She has a couple of scenes here, related to Lily's life of feeling unloved, that show her reach as an actress. That being said, shouldn't a movie about a young girl who's never felt loved be more emotionally stirring than this one is? That ought to be a slam-dunk, but the most you get here is a mild sensation of warmth in the general area of your heart.
Grade: C+
Rated PG-13, moderate profanity, racial slurs, a little violence
1 hr., 50 min.
Copyright © Eric D. Snider.
This work may not be transmitted via the Internet, nor reproduced in any other way, without written consent from Eric D. Snider.
This item has 14 comments
October 17, 2008 at 8:31 am
I would probably find myself sympathizing with Paul Bettany's character if I saw this. First off, I love him to death. Secondly, does anyone really love Dakota Fanning? Or even like her? Maybe it's just me. She gives me the willies.
If I see this for the sole reason that he's is in it, I think I will miss (or maybe even not care about) the point of the movie.
I think this might make me a bad person.
October 17, 2008 at 4:29 pm
Nope, nobody likes Dakota Fanning. She gives me the willies too. I refuse to watch anything she's in.
October 17, 2008 at 6:17 pm
Agree with the dakota fanning comments. Ive never found her compelling. She's kind of freaky. Maybe it was that horse movie... I may be traumatized.
October 17, 2008 at 8:38 pm
Wait,shouldn't the dead sister's name be July? May, June, ..., August? I always thought that was weird.
October 17, 2008 at 9:34 pm
"Black Madonna. A black Virgin Mary? On a jar of honey? What is up with THAT?"
It may be a good idea Mr. Snider, to do some research, or travel the world before you unleash sarcastic, snide remarks...
I was tempted to take your rules advice and "let such idiocy speak for itself. " But your readers deserve better.
Black Madonnas are cultural icons throughout Europe and Central America. I visited a number of Churches that host statues of Black Madonnas in Costa Rica.
From Wikipedia: The hard-to-explain Black Madonnas are generally medieval, or copies of medieval figures, and are found in Catholic areas. The statues are mostly wooden but occasionally stone, often painted and up to 75 cm tall, many dating from between the 11th and 15th centuries. They fall into two main groups: free-standing upright figures and seated figures on a throne. The pictures are usually icons: Byzantine in style though sometimes made in 13th or 14th century Italy. Most are an image of Mother and Child. Their faces tend to have recognizably European features. There are about 450-500 Black Madonnas in Europe, depending on how they are classified.
October 17, 2008 at 9:51 pm
I was tempted to take your rules advice and "let such idiocy speak for itself. " But your readers deserve better.
Well, hopefully my readers understood that "A black Virgin Mary? On a jar of honey? What is up with THAT?" was meant to represent Lily and Rosaleen's reaction to it, not mine. But if they didn't, then this can serve as clarification.
October 17, 2008 at 10:35 pm
Yeah. Excuse my ignorance. I did need that clarification.
October 18, 2008 at 5:19 am
I didn't. It was quite obvious what the reviewer was going for. Even May got it.
October 18, 2008 at 5:49 am
It's interesting that I'm being drawn into this side issue, but here it is anyway: I can't say that I "love" Dakota Fanning, but I sure do admire her. I don't look for every movie she's in, but always appreciate her performances when I happen to see one. For such a young kid she is very good at inhabiting the characters she plays and always makes me believe that she IS that person. When it's called for her intensity can really make you take a step back, and I understand how precociousness like that can give some people the willies. Still, you have to give the girl props for what she can do, and remember that she is NOT the characters she plays, regardless of how good she is at making you think so.
October 19, 2008 at 3:19 pm
Secondly, does anyone really love Dakota Fanning?
Um, her family? Jeez, just because you don't like her movies doesn't mean that she's a bad person.
And don't bring up that thing about that baseball bat when she was 4. She was never actually convicted, if you recall.
October 20, 2008 at 6:18 pm
I think Dakota did an excellent job in this movie. The other actors did great based on what they were given to work with.
Also, I am not positive, but I think Lily had a pic of that same black madonna in her possession, so her response was not "what's up with that?" but more of I need to follow this past based on what I know.
October 25, 2008 at 7:45 am
In the book lily found that picture with her mom's stuff, and kept it with her all the time, because it comforted her when she missed her mother. She sees the same picture on a jar of honey, which leads her to Miss August's house. The book explains it much better.
November 9, 2008 at 7:36 pm
I loved the movie, so did my family.The statue of the black Mary really spoke to us we are trying to find one like the one in the movie.
November 20, 2008 at 4:21 am
May is not a simpleton. May suffers from severe, chronic depression which is a reaction to the death of her twin April. This is plainly explained in the book. I only wonder who it was that overlooked this obvious plot point - the critic or the director. It's hard to tell through the smarmy verbiage.
(And I seem to remember that July was the name of April, May, June & August's mother, btw.)