Secret Life of Bees

Queen Latifa, Dakota Fanning, Jennifer Hudson and Alicia Keys… you’d think there was enough here to keep this movie going for the entire 1 hour 40 minutes. But there just wasn’t.
Lily Owens (Fanning), a young girl haunted by memories of her late mother, retreats with her caregiver to a town beset with her mother’s memories. She finds solace among the bees that are reared there by some sisters (including Latifa and Keys).
For some reason, maybe because the weight of a work of fiction often hangs heavy on a movie adaptation, the casting fails to keep up with the expectations. The symbolism of the original work also seems to generate roughness here. Instead of becoming the story of a girl’s gradual rise in a world where blacks were slowly emerging as well, this becomes a lacklustre journey to nowhere in particular.
The inspiring, odd sisters in Sue Monk Kidd’s novel by the same name were quite incredible. In the case of the movie, that genuine charm and much of the warmth is lost. For instance, when you read the book you instantly connect this warm set of sisters with the industrious bees. In the movie, you can’t quite figure out the link, and that’s a bit of a pity.
Nevertheless, there is much that is serene and calming and inspiring to the touching tale of these sisters, despite the lacklustre narrative at times. The movie can be surprisingly moving and satisfying no matter how naive debut director, Gina Prince-Bythewood’s film may seem at first.