The Secret Life of Bees.

"From its attention-grabbing B-movie beginning, The Secret Life of Bees, a family drama based on the bestselling novel by Sue Monk Kidd, chugs pleasantly into a television special tailored for the crossover female market, while dropping tantalizing hints that it has more on its mind than a benign tale of substitute mothering across the color line," writes Ella Taylor in the Voice.

Richard Corliss in Time: "Bees is another entry in the long tradition of books and movies about whites being nurtured and schooled by the example of the black underling. (You've heard of Huckleberry Finn? Gone With the Wind?)... Can a time-capsule movie like this one have any resonance today? Can it find an audience to nurture in the old, noble, now-discredited Hollywood traditions? I hope so, because adapter-director Gina Prince-Bythewood has made an honorable movie, wonderfully attentive to the skills of its excellent cast, that turned this devout cynic into a believer."

Updated through 10/20.

The story "unfolds in a sentimental, honey-glazed land that vaguely resembles South Carolina in 1964," writes AO Scott in the New York Times. "It would be wrong to say that the troubles of that time and place have been wished away - on the contrary, the movie begins with a scene of horrific domestic violence and includes child abuse, a racially motivated beating, suicide and the threat of a lynching - but from the opening voice-over to the final credits, every terror and sorrow is swaddled in warm, therapeutic comfort. The film insists so strenuously on its themes of redemption, tolerance, love and healing that it winds up defeating itself, and robbing [Sue Monk] Kidd's already maudlin tale of its melodramatic heat."

"I get why Dakota Fanning keeps getting offered these motherless waif roles in Southern-fried melodramas," writes Carina Chocano in the Los Angeles Times. "Those saucer eyes, that lunar pallor, the Georgia accent, the guts to rat her hair into a dull mat and skulk around in shabby rooms that scream my-daddy-drinks. What I don't get is why she keeps taking them."

"[I]mperfect movies sometimes have more life to them than the most painstakingly executed pictures do, and The Secret Life of Bees is a case in point," writes Stephanie Zacharek in Salon. It "might have been alternately titled The Not-So-Secret Power of Women: Sometimes the movie hammers on the stereotype of the strong black woman a little more heavily than it needs to. But Prince-Blythewood (whose credits include the 2000 Love & Basketball) knows that her performers are her real secret weapons, and together they keep the picture from becoming unbearably messagey."

A "Bradley effect" at the box office? John Horn floats the possibility, adding, "The Secret Life of Bees provides a perfect test case on the mainstream appeal of a highbrow movie partially anchored by black stars.... Queen Latifah, Jennifer Hudson, Alicia Keys and Sophie Okonedo.... In part because its primary story unfolds in the home of three black sisters (and is set in 1964), the movie took seven years to get made, its makers say."

Also in the Los Angeles Times, Michael Ordoña talks with Okonedo.

"Once Okenedo exits the story (good riddance to one of those saintly retard clichés), Prince-Bythewood sticks us with singers reading cue cards," writes Armond White in the New York Press. "Problem is, their prompters are full of cornball sentiments about love, self-respect and beekeeping to make honey, the family business."

"As a parable of hope and love, it is enchanting," writes Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun-Times. "Should it have been painful, or a parable? Parable, I think, so it will please those who loved the novel."

"Though the template may be noxiously familiar, The Secret Life of Bees does, at least, give its black characters roles more involving than that of psychic wet nurse," finds Melissa Anderson in Time Out New York.

"There's a lot of Oprah's Book Club-style healing going on in the film, with family secrets brought to light and hard hearts being softened, but Prince-Bythewood and her cast find moments of honesty amidst the personal growth," finds Alonso Duralde at MSNBC.

The film "recalls The Color Purple both in plot particulars and in the way it moves the action to that flower-filled wonderland," writes Tasha Robinson at the AV Club. "It's unabashedly soft and sentimental, in its soft-pedaled tragedies as well as its uplift."

Updates: "The Secret Life of Bees falls into a loose, annoying subgenre of movies I'm going to call 'Ya-Ya Sisterhood Bullshit.'" Mike Russell lists the attributes.

"It's authentic treacle," writes Dana Stevens in Slate. "Or, rather, as long as we're using the metaphor of a sticky sweetener here, authentic honey, like the high-quality product harvested by the movie's trio of beekeeping sisters."

Update, 10/20: "Moviedom's reluctance to veer from the safe bet has only grown as costs have increased," writes Brooks Barnes in the NYT. "With the stakes high, many studio executives worry that films that focus on African-American themes risk being too narrow in their appeal to justify the investment. Hollywood has nonetheless shown a willingness in recent years to bank more heavily on African-American actors and themes."

Posted by dwhudson at October 17, 2008 7:54 AM