'Bees' is a pleasant little film that is as sweet as honey

“The Secret Life  of Bees” opens with Dakota Fanning as Lily informing us that, when she was 4, she killed her mother . She adds that: “She was all I wanted, and I took her away. Nothing else matters.”

It is an ominous opening to a sweet, sentimental film that is likely to please a lot of everyday folks, as opposed to critics who knock it for being sappy.

“Bees” is an easy target for cynics – the same ones who are still railing about “Nights in Rodanthe” being too sentimental without a clue that it’s supposed to be exactly that. (And, besides, it is a box office hit.)

Think “Driving Miss Daisy.” Think “Fried Green Tomatoes.” Even think the classic “To Kill a Mockingbird.” Although “Bees” is not nearly as good as those films, it is in the same territory, both geographically and emotionally.

Fanning, graduating from being a brilliant child actress to becoming a very good teen actress, plays a curious, feisty Lily, who runs away from her abusive father. (Paul Bettany succeeds in making the part more than just villainous.)

Lily is joined by her housekeeper, Rosaleen (Jennifer Hudson, who is still trying to prove that her Oscar win for “Dreamgirls” wasn’t a one-shot lucky break).  Rosaleen gets a cracked head when she tries to register to vote. This is the Oprah Winfrey role from “The Color Purple.”

The setting is South Carolina in 1964, amid the civil rights struggle.

The duo, in the spirit of Huckleberry Finn and Jim, run to rural Tiburon, S.C., where they find a curiously safe haven – an all-pink house that is the site of Black Madonna  honey. It is a highly successful business run by the Boatwright sisters, who are all named for months of the year.

The queen bee is August, played by a miscast Queen Latifah. Latifah is too strong and aggressive for this mother-of-us-all part. Ideally, it should be assigned to someone like the late Ethel Waters.

June, the middle sister, is an intelligent firebrand who takes no guff from anyone; is not yet ready to marry any mere man; and is a budding political activist. Pop singer Alicia Keys is a charismatic, take-charge standout in the role – suggesting that she can, if she wants, have a film career to go along with her singing career.

The real standout performance, though, is turned in by to Sophie Okonedo,  who plays the tragic May, an emotionally scarred, unstable and vulnerable child-woman who cries often, for no particular reason. In  a movie that has a lot of heart, the heart goes out most often to May. Okonedo was Oscar-nominated for “Hotel Rwanda” and should get another supporting nomination here. Hers is the only award buzz that will emerge from the film, but it is deserved.

Norfolk native Nate Parker plays Keys’ persistent boyfriend. Tristan Wilds is the youth who gets into trouble for taking Dakota to see “Surf Party” at the local movie house.

The somewhat overly ripe dialogue comes from the 2002 book written by Sue Monk Kidd and has Latifah say things like, “Send the bees love, honey. Every living thing wants love.”

Filmed in and around Wilmington, N.C., this is a pleasant little movie that must inspire love – or else. Think sweet or else stay away.

Mal Vincent, (757) 446-2347, mal.vincent@pilotonline.com.