Column:

'Bees' is a sticky mess

By Dan Moore

Published Oct. 20, 2008

If "The Secret Life of Bees" were to be transformed into a mid-'90s pop psychology book, its title would be "Men Are from Mars and Also Hate Women and Black People, Women Are from Venus." Adapted from the novel of the same name, "Bees" follows in its middlebrow footsteps, but the execution - the creation and integration of these supposedly big ideas - is so muddled as to be offensive when it isn't just boring.

The story reads like an Oprah's Book Club Mad Lib. Lily (Dakota Fanning, navigating successfully through that awkward not-quite-child-actor phase) is a young girl, of course, with an abusive father, of course, in the 1960s, of course. When mother-surrogate Rosaleen, a worker in her father's fields, is beaten up by racist thugs for trying to vote, Lily orchestrates an escape and the two of them arrive in a town mysteriously connected to her dead mother, of course.

This is where the bees come in: Lily and Rosaleen are taken in by the Boatwright sisters, Queen Latifah among them, who make a locally famous brand of honey. Lily and Rosaleen and, ideally, the audience all learn valuable lessons about themselves through the Boatwrights and their bees, which are not of the honey-producing type so much as the extended-metaphor-producing type (Look, the film says: They're a symbol!). Meanwhile, there is a completely disconnected civil rights plot going on, connecting with the story only when it is time for a tragedy to befall the characters.

The problem, among other problems, in this competently produced film, which is directed attractively and acted as well as could be, is this: The bees have secret lives, Lily and the Boatwrights and Rosaleen have secret lives, her dead mother has a secret life - but none of the forces opposing them have secret lives.

Male figures in this movie have all the motivation of female characters in your average softcore porn. Lily's father exists in this film mainly to drag women into and out of the frame and conspire with bigots. Women, again and again, are captured by insincere men. When a long-term suitor proposes to one of the Boatwrights, she throws rocks at his car until he drives away. Later on, for no particular reason, she is okay with the proposal and asks him to ask her again - he responds, bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, by jumping into her arms as though nothing has happened.

The scene is representative of the rest of the film. When watching, one gets the impression that these characters, who go through all kinds of vague, magical-realistic trials, are supposed to have been changed by revelations that occurred midway through the movie, but none of these revelations are truly explained onscreen. They just happen, and the characters are better off, and the film expects its literariness and its important, weighty background material to carry the day. It's not all as frustrating as the film's treatment of men, but it's all just as ham-fisted.