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'Bees': Honey, no sting

Dakota Fanning has some moments, but syrupy tale will generate little buzz

Dakota Fanning and Queen Latifah in "The Secret Life of Bees."
Dakota Fanning and Queen Latifah in "The Secret Life of Bees."Read more

"The Secret Life of Bees" is like something Mark Twain might have come up with if he wanted to get on Oprah.

It's Huck Finn with a book-group makeover, so your abused child runaway becomes a girl (Dakota Fanning, naturally), and the on-the-road African-American companion becomes one of the Dreamgirls (Jennifer Hudson).

Instead of an amusing odyssey of hucksters and swindlers, we get an earnest, thorough dunking in loving matriarchal society - one, incidentally, that derives its living and its philosophy from another matriarchal society, bees.

In case you miss the connection, there is Queen Latifah as the queen bee, and there is no end to the preciousness of her hive. All the ladies take the name of the month in which they were born, So there is May (Sophie Okonedo), June (Alicia Keys), and Latifah herself is August. I wish I could say it's because she's hot.

Latifah, alas, is locked in a role that comes with a bun and spectacles, and earnest speeches about how, if you give love to the bees, they return that love with gooey honey.

She gives these lessons to little Lily (Fanning), who's taken refuge on the benevolent bee plantation, fleeing from her nasty dad (Paul Bettany). Lily learns about the secret life of bees, and also of the secret life of the mother who died when she was small. August knows the details of mother's mysterious past, but saves them until Lily's ready to understand them.

This is after the girl has had some hair-raising encounters with local bigots - the movie is set in the 1960s south, and Lily has to learn some hard racial realities (These include the danger of going to the movies with a black boyfriend.)

She must also learn to forgive herself for the circumstances that led to her mother's death, which brings us back to self-esteem, hugs, flowing honey and a soundtrack full of female singer-songwriters.

Okay, I'm making it sound awful, and that's not fair, because the movie has its moments. Fanning's a deft young actress, and there's no chance she's going to leave the viewer unmoved when she has a spiritual reunion with a deceased mom.

I wouldn't say it's an authentic moment, but it works. And it doesn't have the heightened artifice of many other scenes. Alicia Keys shows spirit as August's militant sister, but Latifah looks like she's sinking under the weight of her character's nobility. The shortest stick, though, goes to Sophie Okonedo, the British actress who should be getting Thandie Newton roles, but here is stuck playing some hapless combination of Ophelia and Forrest Gump.

Somebody get this woman a backless dress, a martini and a cigarette. *

Produced by Lauren Shuler Donner, James Lassiter, Will Smith and Joe Pichirallo, written and directed by Gina Prince-Bythewood, based on the book by Sue Monk Kidd, music by Mark Isham, distributed by Fox Searchlight.