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Rene Rodriguez, Miami Herald: A cold and intellectual look at people searching for spiritual meaning that, instead of imparting any resonant observations about faith and family, comes off as kooky and affected. Read more
Jeff Shannon, Seattle Times: It's more thoughtfully conceived than most of what passes for filmmaking these days. Read more
Rex Reed, New York Observer: Cold and elusive, Bee Season lacks the crucial emotional ingredients to make us care, and it remains too stubbornly esoteric and cerebral to appeal to anything more than a small and curious art-house crowd. Read more
Ruthe Stein, San Francisco Chronicle: While directed with intelligence and visual flair by Scott McGehee and David Siegel, Bee Season ultimately is undone by the same trait that makes young spelling whizzes insufferable. Read more
Richard Roeper, Ebert & Roeper: It got waylaid. Read more
Eleanor Ringel Gillespie, Atlanta Journal-Constitution: Bee Season is earnest and heartfelt and respectful. And a botch. Read more
Kerry Lengel, Arizona Republic: The intellectual grist is intriguing, but one can't escape the feeling that Bee Season is only skimming the surface of its source material. Read more
Ty Burr, Boston Globe: Over the years this actor has become a beguiling silver fox, trickier than he seems, but [Gere] still doesn't have the psychic weight to pull off a role like Saul. Read more
Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times: Bee Season is affecting in ways that movies have all but given up trying to be. Read more
Bruce Westbrook, Houston Chronicle: Fragmented and obtuse, with characters who fail to resonate. Read more
Peter Rainer, Christian Science Monitor: 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 more
Michael Booth, Denver Post: Reflecting Goldberg's virtuoso novel, the film sets up rich dichotomies of what people say and do, and of satisfying the self vs. pleasing the community. Read more
Lisa Schwarzbaum, Entertainment Weekly: The movie works earnestly to transform unfamiliar concepts of philosophy as well as by now exceedingly familiar concepts of endearing/sadistic spelling-bee hysteria into cinematically new representations of letters made flesh. Read more
Terry Lawson, Detroit Free Press: Though Bee Season has flaws beyond Gere's casting, it compels us to look at the things that words and lives are made of, which is no abstract achievement. Read more
Chris Vognar, Dallas Morning News: One of the most unusual portraits of spiritual striving you're likely to see. And for that alone, it's worth your attention. Read more
Ella Taylor, L.A. Weekly: The movie's most powerful theme is not the damage done by overambitious parents, but the bewilderment of urban adults who are deeply ambivalent toward religion while desperately longing for spiritual fulfillment. Read more
Jan Stuart, Newsday: Bee Season buzzes with a reverence for the spiritual potential of language, but strands its characters at an irritating loss for words. Read more
Stephen Whitty, Newark Star-Ledger: Bee Season ... goes vaguely out of focus from the beginning. Read more
Jack Mathews, New York Daily News: I don't know whether Gere, an avowed Buddhist, took this role to embarrass kabbala faddists like Madonna and Ashton Kutcher, or to see if he could pass for Jewish -- and a scholar! It's a lost cause, in any case. Read more
Roger Moore, Orlando Sentinel: [A] pretentious family-in-crisis drama ... Read more
James Berardinelli, ReelViews: There's no shortage of material on the screen in Bee Season -- it's just not assembled in a satisfying manner. Read more
Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times: The performance by Flora Cross is haunting in its seriousness. She doesn't act out; she acts in. Read more
Jeff Strickler, Minneapolis Star Tribune: The lack of emotion is a bit off-putting at first, but as the story unfolds, we grow to appreciate that the film's detached tone reflects the family dynamics. Read more
Stephen Cole, Globe and Mail: Though bathed in ecclesiastical light and a work of obvious craft and ambition, Bee Season is grimly serious and rather full of itself. Read more
Peter Howell, Toronto Star: So intent is the film on finding symbols and magic in anything and everything, it forgets that flesh-and-blood humans are waiting on screen and off for something to really care about. Read more
Claudia Puig, USA Today: It doesn't quite manage the shattering emotionality of the novel, but it's an intriguing, if slightly plodding, adaptation. Read more
Todd McCarthy, Variety: The film is ice cold, never finding a way to invite the viewer into the story. Read more
Jessica Winter, Village Voice: Its hieroglyphics are vividly rendered, but Bee Season never manages to spell them out. Read more
Desson Thomson, Washington Post: Co-directors Scott McGehee and David Siegel, whose visual schemes lent a hypnotic aura to their previous collaborations ... don't find the right balance of story and image this time. Read more