Movie review: 'The Secret Life of Bees'

Jennifer Hudson and Alicia Keys (Credit: Sidney Baldwin/Fox Searchlight)

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2 stars (out of four)

The real shame about “The Secret Life of Bees” is that it tries so very, very hard to hit all its marks: Reasonably faithful adaptation of New York Times best-seller? Check. Heartfelt message of racial tolerance? Check. Highly marketable cast? Double check. You can practically feel the sweat dripping from the movie’s earnest brow.
 
Sweat and good intentions, however, will   take you only so far. And they take “Bees” right up to the threshold of entertaining—but not one step further.

“Bees” is based on Sue Monk Kidd ’s 2002  novel, a hugely popular exploration of family, love and the brutal politics of race in 1964 South Carolina. But while Kidd’s understated writing style provided her angst-ridden characters room to breathe, director Gina Prince-Bythewood ’s script forces the same characters through their paces at breakneck speed, never allowing a moment for reflection, much less an opportunity for anyone to break from their predetermined function.

Dakota Fanning (looking startlingly and suddenly like a teenager) plays Lily, a lonely budding writer whose life is defined by two realities: She’s pretty sure she killed her own mother, who may or may not have loved her. And her father (Paul Bettany , doing a very convincing impression of an angry, devastated man who has lost everything, including at least some of his mind) wants nothing to do with her.

When events in their small South Carolina town threaten them both, Lily and Rosaleen, her one-time nanny (Jennifer Hudson), strike out for Tiburon, where Lily suspects she may find clues to her mother’s mysterious life. Instead, she finds a giant pink house, a honey company and three sisters.

Kidd’s novel didn’t shy from casting these women as archetypes, but the movie doesn’t cast as much as it strait-jackets: There’s August, the mother/nurturer (Queen Latifah, delivering a restrained, even somber performance); June, the feisty, intermittently selfish artist (Alicia Keys); and May, the woman-child (Sophie Okonedo), still grieving the long-ago loss of her twin sister.

This set up—four black women caring for one white child—has the potential to be, shall we say, icky. Like the book, the movie does what it can to acknowledge and defuse  this tension (Keys delivers several bracingly candid lines). But unlike Kidd’s work, the film is too beholden to advancing the plot line—and preparing for the looming emotional tsunami—to allow most of its characters to advance beyond caricatures. (Only Bettany’s solid performance makes Lily’s father an exception: He’s clearly deranged, but he’s also clearly in pain, which at least partly explains why he treats his daughter so abominably.)

When the real suffering starts, you may find yourself thinking things can’t get much worse for these people. (You’d be wrong: in 1960s South Carolina, black women were basically guaranteed more than their share of suffering.) And by the time the final on-screen tear has been wiped away, and the last hanky hung on the line to dry, all but the most forgiving audience members will feel cruelly manipulated.

But what you won’t feel is especially edified. Because this movie holds that there are two kinds of people: good people and bad people. Beekeepers and racists. Righteous white lawyers and small-minded white secretaries. You get the idea. And while it’s all very neat and tidy, it’s just not very satisfying.

jreaves@tribune.com

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