Tearjerking 'Life of Bees' won't generate much of a buzz
By Phil Villarreal
Pvillarreal@azstarnet.com
Tucson, Arizona | Published: 10.16.2008
"The Secret Life of Bees" is a tear-jerker for all the wrong reasons.
Set in 1964 South Carolina, the melodrama slogs through the torturous life of teenage Lily (Dakota Fanning), who is a walking country music song.
She accidentally shoots and kills her mom at age 4, suffers abuse from her dad, watches her best friend get beaten nearly to death in the street, only to run away and have her first boyfriend kidnapped by a lynch mob.
Lily's maudlin misadventures take her through the racist Deep South. You feel bad for Lily, and also for yourself for having to sit through unredeemed despair.
The only things working in favor of this poor girl are unlikely plot contrivances.
After she runs away from her dad, with housekeeper/nanny Rosaleen (Jennifer Hudson) at her side, Lily happens upon a house run by three kindly beekeeper sisters who graciously take the pair in.
A late plot twist that closely resembles an arm twist groaningly reveals that the sisters have a special, one-in-a-million connection with Lily.
The stately Boatwrights, each named after months of the year, consist of literal queen bee August (Queen Latifah), sassy June (Alicia Keys) and oversensitive, fainting-prone May (Sophie Okonedo). Each has something very specific and excruciating to teach Lily in her oh-so-slowly coming of age.
Director Gina Prince-Bythewood ("Love & Basketball"), adapting Sue Monk Kidd's bestselling novel, can't generate a page-turning feel.
The movie slogs like honey dripping off a butter knife. It doesn't help that Prince-Bythewood slams the audience with heavy-handed symbolism that relates the Boatwright house to a beehive.
The action is functional but hamstrung because of the shallowness of the characters. Fanning is the only actress with a well-rounded part, and she responds with a blossoming performance that far exceeds everything she's done before.
Lily tangles with inner demons, including that whopper of a childhood murder (original sin, anyone?) and shifts convincingly from guarded innocence to take-charge feminism. Fanning appears to be one of the few kid actresses who will pass through the dreaded Macaulay Wall unscathed.
Everyone else in the movie, almost down to the extras, are either shining beacons of goodness and light or wretched stink-beasts.
Lily's ever-fuming father, T. Ray (Paul Bettany), is the most repulsive of the rogue's gallery. He slaps Lily around and forces her to kneel on grits for an hour in retribution for sneaking outside to cradle keepsakes that remind Lily of her mother.
Dramatic, ridiculous mood shifts are part of the villain's frightening essence, but Bettany plays T. Ray unconvincingly, as if operated by remote control. Press this button for insane yelling, and that one for silent sulking.
It's fitting for a film that offers too much stinger and not enough honey.
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