The Secret Life of Bees causes buzz

Dakota Fanning grows up in this heartfelt adaptation of the best-selling novel The Secret Life of Bees. As an adolescent girl in mid-1960s South Carolina, Fanning’s Lily Owens flees her abusive father with her caregiver, Jennifer Hudson, to live with some friends, the Boatright sisters, on their family-run honey farm. Queen Latifah, Alicia Keys and Sophie Okonedo portray the sisters and it’s their outlook, spirituality and culture that provide the film its gravitational center. And it’s here that the motherless girl finds the comfort of family for the first time. But this being the heated Civil Rights era, the runaway’s presence causes controversy and conflict when she is found by white authorities. Paul Bettany and Hilarie Burton co-star. Rated PG-13.