For all the hype it got I was expecting a lot more!

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

Dakota Fanning gives a sensitive, thoughtful, if somewhat familiar performance as a troubled white teenager in the racially-charged South, circa 1964, who has run away from her abusive father and now finds herself boarding with three black sisters in South Carolina who have inherited the family business, manufacturing and jarring the best honey in the county. Director Gina Prince-Bythewood also adapted her overcooked script from Sue Monk Kidd's bestseller, and the melodramatic entanglements that push the plot forward are often ridiculous and illogical. Prince-Bythewood, attempting to get every little nugget of sentimentality and 'importance' from Kidd's novel onto the screen, leaves some of her supporting characters wanting--what with a perplexing (and unlikely) suicide and the kidnapping of an innocent black boy by police which is summed up by an infuriating series of hugs. The ladies (Queen Latifah, Alicia Keys, and Sophie Okonedo) are an interesting, magnetic trio, but Jennifer Hudson (as Fanning's caretaker who escapes along with her) seems to get lost in the shuffle. Some marvelous moments are ultimately undercut by too much artificial sweetening. ** from ****

OK, before saying anything, I have to clarify that I love Dakota Faning and I really like the cast on the movie but honestly the movie is not good at all, actually I'm sorry but the movie was BAD! I felt that Dakota was overacting in general, and the whole story is so hackneyed that at some points is boring and you just want the movie to end! I was thinking the whole time what Dakota was thinking when she said yes to be in the movie, the directing seems very amateur, the story was old, not funny, and barely entertained. My advice, don't watch it, or if you really want to watch it, don't expect ANYTHING great, then, you wont be disappointed.

Dakota Fanning plays a teen named Lilly who has lost her mother. She goes in search of answers and ends up in the home of a woman (Queen Latifah) and her sisters, who own bee hives and bottle the honey for a living. Living with the women, she finds purpose in life. A subplot has her unpleasant stepdad looking for her. The story is set in the 1960s Deep South, so there's plenty of racial discord. The movie may remind some of THE COLOR PURPLE or FRIED GREEN TOMATOES. For those old enough to remember, it also bears overtones of A MEMBER OF THE WEDDING. Fanning is heartbreaking as the troubled child and Latifah plays the family matriarch like she was born to it. A good movie, but too long (well over two hours) for its slender plot.

When you have seen thousands of movies, as I have, rarely does anything come along that has truly novel story elements. That is a feature of this movie, set mostly in the summer of 1964, in South Carlonia. It has white vs black bigotry and it has a young girl unhappy at home, elements that I have seen in any number of movies. Add to that I remember 1964, I was in college, I lived through those rough times.So what makes this particular movie a cut above average? It is the fine ensemble cast, which has 14 year old Dakota Fanning as its focus. It is about a young girl who lost her mother at age 4, whose dad is not particularly warm and caring, who goes on a pilgrimage to seek the truth. In the process she gets with a family that keeps bees, and she learns about the secret Life of Bees in the process.Dakota Fanning is Lily Owens and in an early scene we see that she accidentally, at age 4, shoots a gun which apparently kills her mother who had been gone, but came home. Her dad has always told her it was to get her things, but not her daughter.After a particular racially-charged incident young Lily and her housekeeper Jennifer Hudson as Rosaleen hit the road and eventually seek refuge at the Pepto-pink home of the Boatwrights who make honey with a picture of a black Mary on the label. Queen Latifah is August Boatwright, Alicia Keys is June Boatwright, and Brit Sophie Okonedo is May Boatwright.In a role that is hard to recognize him, Brit Paul Bettany is the dad, T. Ray Owens.Good movie, with a fine ensemble cast.SPOILERS: After Lily and Rosaleen become accepted as members of the Boatwright clan, T. Ray shows up, finally figuring out where Lily had gone. As it turns out, the same place Lily's mother had gone to get away from T. Ray. In fact August had been Lily's nanny in years past. After first insisting that Lily go home with him, he eventually resigns to leaving her there "with her three mommas", but before he goes Lily asks him if her mother really did NOT come back for her. He told her he lied all those years, she really did come back for her daughter. Why did he lie? "Because she did not come back for me." Lily achieved closure.