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88Above all, it contains characters I care for, played by actors I admire.
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88The other actress to stand out is, unsurprisingly, Queen Latifa, whose intense screen presence makes her a force to be reckoned with even when she's simply standing in the background, not saying anything.
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88Soars on the strength of strong acting and a script that stubbornly refuses to go all sappy and preachy.
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75The filmmakers give Latifah and Fanning room to create characters that breathe in the sweet smell of clover and breathe out the contented sigh of independence.
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75Suffused with a golden glow, the movie looks and sounds like a fairy tale.
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75The final result is a bittersweet product closer to honey than treacle.
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75On screen something happens that goes beyond Monk's powers of description and Fanning's way of seeming 14 and 44 at the same time.
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75One of the pleasures of the film is that the themes don't hit you over the head.
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75It warms the heart in the hands of such sensitive storytellers.
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75It's the strength of the actresses and their nurturing community that makes this Eden so satisfying.
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70An affecting ensemble piece that's destined to generate a fair share of awards-season buzz.
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70Keys isn't given much to do except look as though she's posing for an album cover, but Okonedo's face is a marvel. Every thought, every emotion flickers across it like clouds obscuring the sun.
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67It's pleasant and often touching, and the well-chosen cast sells what little drama they get, but there's no depth and little affect, and every would-be conflict peters out noncommittally.
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63Hampered by over-earnestness and tugs too intently at the heartstrings.
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60May be overly sentimental at times, but at least it's about something.
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60The Secret Life of Bees may not be a "To Kill a Mockingbird" on page or screen, but Fanning is the center of its soul and intelligence. It's Hollywood's job to find strong parts for this precocious genius as she matures into womanhood.
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Sweat and good intentions will take you only so far. And they take Bees right up to the threshold of entertaining--but not one step further.
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50Emotes mightily but says precious little.
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50The Secret Life of Bees showcases Fanning, who is growing into an impressive teenage actress - even if a scene where she licks honey off an older boy's finger is, well, creeptastic.
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50If you like your sentimentality sweet and sticky, then The Secret Life of Bees is definitely your jar of honey.
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50Fortunately, the cast cuts through a cloying script and boosts unsure direction with sharply focused performances.
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50Generally works like a drone but sometimes provides glimpses of the queens at the center
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50The Secret Life of Bees is a lesson -- or, rather, a whole series of them -- we no longer need to learn. Of course, it's also a divine-sisterhood-defeats-all chick flick, and on that score there's no denying that its clichés are rousingly up to date.
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Only near the end does this likable but saccharine movie fleetingly complicate the "Gone With the Wind"–fed delusion that the love of poor, black nannies for their white charges was undiluted by bitterness.
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50What's being sold here is the movie equivalent of the honey-drenched sweet potato biscuits that are forever being passed around on-screen. Their nutritional value may be nil, but they sure look comforting.
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50The film insists so strenuously on its themes of redemption, tolerance, love and healing that it winds up defeating itself, and robbing Ms. Kidd's already maudlin tale of its melodramatic heat.
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50Like a mouthful of honey, The Secret Life of Bees is cloyingly sweet and gooey, and you're not quite sure you can swallow it undiluted.
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50Thanks to Gina Prince-Blythewood's treacly screenplay and plodding direction, the movie quickly congeals into a mess of sentimental cliches.
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42Bees is a movie in which a bunch of powerful African American women get their lives upended and in some cases destroyed so a little white girl can feel better about herself.
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42The honey runs thick in The Secret Life of Bees, and so does the treacle. The cloying dullness sets in early, although not from the first frame.
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40Should have billed itself as a fairy tale, as that's the only possible way to swallow what Prince-Bythewood and Kidd are feeding us.
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40The source material remains affecting and the cast work hard to add dimension to a lacklustre screenplay. But sadly, it adds up to less than the sum of its parts.
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User score distribution:
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Positive: 7 out of 8
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Mixed: 1 out of 8
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Negative: 0 out of 8
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JayH.6
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KenS.9
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ShanaK.9