A female-dominated cast in a coming-of-age story rife with racial intolerance and the search for identity are the perfect recipe for a total cheesefest. But despite the odds, The Secret Life of Bees — the mostly accurate adaptation of Sue Monk Kidd's best-selling novel — steers almost entirely clear of cliches.
Lily Owens (Fanning) killed her mother in a gun accident when she was six and now, at 14, feels the bite of her father's bitter loneliness and poor parenting skProxy-Connection: keep-alive Cache-Control: max-age=0
ls in civil rights-era South Carolina. After a spat with her dad, Lily runs away with her housekeeper and friend Rosaleen (Hudson); she soon meets the Boatwright sisters (Keys and Latifah), a pair of culturally-enlightened women who run a honey-making business. They take her into their home and show her — surprise! — a little bit about the secret life of bees, but more importantly, their own secret lives.
Keys shines as June Boatwright, and Latifah anchors Lily as the motherly August Boatwright. But Oscar-winner Hudson lacks the screen presence of her costars — apparently, she needs musical numbers to bolster her acting. Fanning gives a typically stellar performance, but it's her tear-jerking scenes with Latifah that really make this film worth watching.
