Note: I'm limiting select reviews to 250 words this
week due to time constraints.
Oh
what a pleasure it is to be in the company of four great
actresses during The Secret Life of Bees. Dakota
Fanning, Jennifer Hudson, Sophie Okenedo, and Queen Latifah are
all superb in the film, casting a genuine sense of warmth over
the viewer. And Alicia Keys—who knew she could act? Despite its
seasoned line-up of strong female African-American headliners
and the gifted teenage lead who often upstages them all,
however, The Secret Life of Bees’ Civil Rights-era
narrative fails to engage on the same level that its
performances do. There isn’t anything inherently wrong about the
movie’s story of a white girl (Fanning) and her family’s black
maid (Hudson) seeking refuge in the home of a honey-harvesting
group of sisters (Keys, Latifah, and Okenedo) after a they
respectively endure domestic abuse and racial injustice. But
writer/director Gina Prince-Bythewood, adapting from Sue Monk
Kidd’s source novel, fails to capture the level emotional
authenticity that the material could’ve lent itself to. For
example, a third-act death that should be devastating is only
mildly-moving because subsequent scenes seem to thrust the cast
into a battle to extract something beyond surface-sympathy from
the script. The Secret Life of Bees is the last thing
you’d expect it to be given its wide-ranging cast: muted. Yes,
it is wonderful to spend time with these fine actresses, but
it’s a shame that Prince-Bythewood has fashioned such a basic
and derivative motion picture out of the opportunity.
-Danny Baldwin, Bucket Reviews
Review Published on: 10.15.2008
Screened on: 10.7.2008 at the Zanuck Theatre on the Fox
Lot in Century City, CA.