Bee Season
Fox Searchlight Pictures | Release Date: November 11, 2005 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
54
METASCORE
Mixed or average reviews based on 32 Critic Reviews
Positive:
13
Mixed:
16
Negative:
3
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
Chicago Sun-TimesRoger Ebert
The performance by Flora Cross is haunting in its seriousness. She doesn't act out; she acts in. Read full review
83
Portland OregonianShawn Levy
Sometimes a movie can defy rational logic, yet still make sense emotionally in a way that pulls you through. Bee Season is one. Read full review
80
Los Angeles TimesKenneth Turan
With the help of clear direction and some excellent acting, especially from Flora Cross in a memorable debut as Eliza, Bee Season is affecting in ways that movies have all but given up trying to be. Read full review
75
Christian Science MonitorPeter Rainer
Bee Season, at its core, is about something powerful: The ways in which family members wreak destruction on each other with the best of intentions. Read full review
75
USA TodayClaudia Puig
Based on the captivating novel by Myla Goldberg, Bee Season is evocative and superbly acted. Read full review
75
TV Guide MagazineKen Fox
One isn't quite ready to forgive the miscasting of Gere, however, who is about as convincing a Kabbalistic scholar as Madonna. Read full review
75
Philadelphia InquirerCarrie Rickey
Bee Season is lit by human sunbeam Flora Cross as Eliza. Read full review
70
Chicago ReaderMeredith Brody
The directors exercise their stylistic flourishes mainly in the imaginative sequences depicting the young daughter's trancelike state while she conjures up the correct orthography in the spelling bees her father's determined she must win, and while the film observes the same heartbreaking obsessiveness as the popular "Spellbound," it has none of that documentary's cuteness. Read full review
70
L.A. WeeklyElla Taylor
McGehee and Siegel's ornate structure and editing stay just this side of tricky, as does their borderline-goofy use of special effects to make us see the world (and the words) through Eliza's anxious eyes. Read full review
70
The New York TimesManohla Dargis
A serious film filled with both great and awkward ideas and made as much from the heart as the head. Read full review
70
Wall Street JournalJoe Morgenstern
For a film filled with jagged shards of glass, and sometimes shot kaleidoscopically, through the windows of houses or cars, Bee Season is carefully, almost relentlessly, intended. That said, the script, by Naomi Foner Gyllenhaal, touches on themes that rarely make it to the big screen.
67
Entertainment WeeklyLisa Schwarzbaum
Bee Season answers the question no Talmudic student or fan of "Unfaithful" has thought to ask: What would Richard Gere look like as a learned Jewish scholar and teacher? Read full review
63
ReelViewsJames Berardinelli
There's no shortage of material on the screen in Bee Season - it's just not assembled in a satisfying manner. Read full review
58
Baltimore SunChris Kaltenbach
The film ultimately is a letdown, leaving too many questions unanswered and ending in a gesture that doesn't really solve anything. Read full review
50
The Hollywood ReporterKirk Honeycutt
Ultimately, its success may depend on how emotionally satisfying audiences find this flirtation with Jewish mysticism. Read full review
50
VarietyTodd McCarthy
The film is ice cold, never finding a way to invite the viewer into the story, and Richard Gere doesn't convince as a Jewish biblical scholar. Read full review
50
Village VoiceJessica Winter
The mysticism only mystifies; its hieroglyphics are vividly rendered, but Bee Season never manages to spell them out. Read full review
50
San Francisco ChronicleRuthe Stein
The attempt to be clever is transparent. Read full review
50
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Stephen Cole
Though bathed in ecclesiastical light and a work of obvious craft and ambition, Bee Season is grimly serious and rather full of itself. Read full review
50
Rolling StonePeter Travers
Fine directors Scott McGehee and David Siegel take a detour into mumbo jumbo. Read full review
50
Dallas ObserverMelissa Levine
This is inelegant storytelling, and it almost entirely cancels out what's good about the film: Max Minghella, for one thing. The son of director Anthony, he gives a very fresh performance, popping with energy that the other characters seem to drain. Read full review
50
Washington PostDesson Thomson
Co-directors Scott McGehee and David Siegel, whose visual schemes lent a hypnotic aura to their previous collaborations -- "The Deep End" and "Suture" -- don't find the right balance of story and image this time. Read full review
50
Seattle Post-IntelligencerSean Axmaker
This well-meaning mistake gets lost in the metaphors. Read full review
50
Boston GlobeTy Burr
Here the foundation has been miscast. That's M-I-S-C-A-S-T. Read full review
50
Miami HeraldRene Rodriguez
A drama about dysfunction, spelling bees, mental illness, Hare Krishnas and kaballah. The movie is just as unwieldy as it sounds, except that it also stars Richard Gere. Read full review
50
The New RepublicStanley Kauffmann
All these mystical elements are so sententiously handled and bump into one another so clumsily that they make the film seem nutty. But because spirituality is the theme of Bee Season, we are obviously not meant to laugh at it. Well, I wish I could get Jehovah's reaction to the picture. Read full review
40
The A.V. ClubNoel Murray
Everyone in Bee Season is chasing spiritual peace and falling behind, and McGehee and Siegel catch them at their most worn-out and static. Read full review
40
Austin ChronicleKimberley Jones
Myla Goldberg's novel about spelling-bee fever, a family in chaos, and religious/mystic exploration arrives on the screen with all its faults intact, but few of its charms. Read full review
40
EmpireSteve O'Hagan
Gloopy family drama meets Hollywood cod-spirituality in a movie that’s defeated by its over-ambitious scope. Read full review
38
Chicago TribuneAllison Benedikt
Gere and Binoche are both terribly miscast--one far too charismatic, the other far too dowdy, which is something for Juliette Binoche. And the spelling bees? Dull. Dreary. Read full review
38
New York Daily NewsJack Mathews
It took one novelist, one screenwriter and two directors - Scott McGehee and David Siegel - to cobble together this earnest nonsense, and if it weren't for 12-year-old novice Flora Cross, who plays its central character, all would be lost. Read full review
38
New York PostKyle Smith
F-A-I-L-U-R-E. Read full review
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