Such a frustrating disappointment

Load of rubbish!!

It was OK. I don't see why everyone loves it so much. It wasn't very smart or deep or well-directed.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

"Bee Season" wants so much to be complex, to dig so far beneath its core attributes to root out something more complicated, that it falls apart dramatically--and alienates the audience. Pre-teen Jewish girl from Northern California, a local spelling bee champion, blames herself for the disintegration of her affluent family: her mentally and spiritually-fragile mother and older brother, and her father, a Religious Studies professor, who drives his loved ones hard to succeed. Directors Scott McGehee and David Siegel, working from Naomi Foner Gyllenhaal's adaptation of Myla Goldberg's novel, understand that the spelling bee sequences themselves are not the heart and soul of the piece--the father's quest for perfection in reaching high and holy truths is the actual focal point; however, before we can become attuned to this family's rhythm and dysfunctional dynamic, we have nothing but the spelling bee scenes to hook us. Since the contests are not composed for suspense or personal exhalation, the melodrama on the home front seems equally underwhelming (perhaps more so). The actors do what they can, but the balky, stop-and-start feel of the writing defeats them (the talented youngster, apparently a master speller, asks fundamental questions--such as "what is a mystic?"--and doesn't know what a kaleidoscope is). A handsomely-produced, but not sharply edited (nor sharply resolved) story of family responsibilities and expectations. *1/2 from ****

I was browsing through the comments for this movie and was sadly disappointed - it seems no one has read the book upon which the movie was based. I was reading Bee Season and heard there was a movie that was made a few years ago, so I made a mental note to check it out when I finished the book. Then, when I saw it in a bargain bin at K-Mart for $5, I couldn't pass it up.I popped it in and immediately loved the cast - Richard Gere was an unexpected but wonderful choice for Saul, and Ms. Binoche made an achingly poignant Miriam. The casting for Aaron and Eliza was great, too, although I pictured Aaron more stereotypically nerdy (he was far too attractive and mainstream in the movie, I thought - in the book, he was constantly being made fun of and picked on). They made subtle changes in the movie, some I wasn't very thrilled with - changing Aaron and Saul's guitars to a cello and a violin, changing the time line of the story so that Eliza only goes through one bee season instead of two, etc. And I thought changing Chali's gender was a big mistake - in the book, Aaron was attracted to Chali's seemingly freeing beliefs, not because he had pretty blonde hair and big dreamy eyes. I would just say to anyone who is thinking of seeing this movie, and to those who were dissatisfied with it, READ THE BOOK! Please, go and read it - don't let your judgement of the movie cloud the beautiful and interesting story that Myla Goldberg has invented. Ms. Goldberg has a profound gift for prose, and she weaves the tale from every perspective represented. Because she writes with third-person omniscience, you as the reader get a chance to see into each character's thoughts at all times, which really helps you get a sense of the real story going on as the family unravels. You find that Eliza is incredibly sensitive and mature for a nine-year-old, that Aaron is desperate for deep and heartfelt validation as a person and as a man, and searches for it everywhere, and that Saul is the sort of person so wrapped up with big and lofty things that he misses the beautiful, seemingly insignificant but jarringly important things all around him, like the fact that his children are clamoring for his attention and love, and his wife has been stealing for 18 years. Seriously, how distracted can you be?You even begin to relate to Miriam's frantic attempts to put herself back together through taking things that don't belong to her. If this author can make stealing seem reasonable, ha ha, I'd say she is going to do great things. I, for one, am looking forward to scouring the library for other Myla Goldberg novels. A warning, though: there are some scenes in the book that, if included in the movie, would have given it an "R" or even an "X" rating. Just FYI for those who are interested. So, as a summary: Bee Season the movie - So so. Bee Season the book - Wonderful.

Another IMDb user who rated this just as low as I did called this an infomercial for Kaballah. On that, I must disagree. Infomercials generally have strong narrative voices, attempt to explain their products in easy-to-understand and easy-to-appreciate terms, and try to keep you interested, informed, and engaged. As a true independent film from the 1990 - 2010 period, Bee Season does none of these things.I know no more about Kaballah now than I did before I watched the movie. I care no more about it than I did then either. So as an infomercial, it fails miserably. The filmmakers do follow today's independent film mantra of using as few words as humanly possible. It has been decided by this generation that words are a crutch best left to Hollywood hacks. All great movies are visual only. This "Truth" alone often leaves me clueless on independent movies as to why we are seeing what we are seeing, in what order things are happening, and whether something is actually happening or imagined.Most of today's intelligentsia calls this stretching one's mind and challenging one's audience. I call it pretentious obfuscation and self-aggrandizement. Bee Season, to me, is the poster child for this independent film phenomenon.The trailers led me to believe that this would be another Akeelah and the Bee -- a film I loved. Instead, it is even worse than the only other movie I know that had Kabbalah as part of its plot - A Stranger Among Us -- and that was putrid.I try to consider a movie on its own terms. Viewed that way, Juliet Binoche was remaking Woman Under The Influence without Gena Rowlands' talent or John Cassavettes' direction. If Kate Bosworth was a real Hare Krishna, on any terms, then I'm a giraffe! The movie was so ponderously directed and withholding of information about the movie's most innocuous events. Therefore, it was difficult to know when something was important or just unbearably routine.I actually did think that the girl playing Eliza and Richard Gere gave excellent performances that made their characters somewhat interesting at times even though they both made many actions inconsistent with the characters they carefully built up. It is for these two performances that I give this film 2 out of ten instead of zero.

I know a lot of people liked this but my wife and I found it depressing, confusing and very unsatisfying. Do not waste your time and money on this movie. The wife seemed to have a lot of problems but there is no explanation as to why or what she was really doing every time she disappeared. The son had a lot of anger but that is hard to figure out and why would the family seem to be clueless as to his condition. The daughter- did she develop this spelling ability all of a sudden? Why did she never smile? Maybe she was as depressed making this movie as we were while watching it. Richard Gere has no clue as to what is going on in his family yet purports to be a family guy. I don't get it