(director/writer: Andrew Patterson; screenwriter: James Montague; cinematographer: M.I. Littin-Mennz; editor: Patrick J. Smith; music: Jared Bulmer, Erick Alexander; cast: Matthew McConaughey (Amiziah King), Angelina LookingGlass (Kateri), Kurt Russell (Honey Baron), Jake Horowitz (Oat), Scott Shepherd (musical friend of Amiziah), Rob Morgan (Owen McTeague), Tony Revolori (musician), Owen Teague (musician), Bruce Davis (Sunderland), Cole Sprouse (musician), Ben Hardesty (Stephen); Runtime: 130; MPAA Rating: NR; producers: Andrew Patterson, Teddy Schwarzman, Michael Heimler, James Montague, Will Greenffield, David Heyman, Jeffrey Clifford; Black Bear; 2025)
“The crowd-pleasing film is an unwieldy tale of the American south as an idealized tight-knit community.”
Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz
Andrew Patterson (“The Vast of Night”) directs and writes this folksy sweet relationship country film that centers around a beekeeper whose wife is deceased and a Native-American foster daughter he once raised with his wife who is now a waitress at the diner. He hires her to be a bee keeper and trains her to be his eventual replacement.
It’s co-written by James Montague with good intent. The crowd-pleasing film is an unwieldy tale of the American south as an idealized tight-knit community that features tales of crime, folksy rural characters, happy musical moments and beekeeping.
It’s set in a small riverfront rural town in Oklahoma. Amziah (Matthew McConaughey, his first film in 6 years) is a local beekeeper magnate by day and at night plays with his bluegrass band (Jake Horowitz, Scott Shepherd, Scott Shepherd, Tony Revolori and Cole Sprouse) at a local fast-food place. His best pal is the town lawyer played by Rob Morgan.
When the police find barrels of stolen honey in back of a truck, they ask Amziah to help them find out whose honey it is. Things become unpredictable with the ongoing investigation.
Meanwhile Amziah is using kindness to raise his timid, outcast, foster daughter Kateri (Angelina LookingGlass) to learn life lessons by taking her cues from caring for the bees. They live in a poor and diverse community, where folks are mostly kind and the unpolluted country landscape is a treasure. The fun film delivers a humanistic message that might seem foreign to today’s divisive climate in the country.
The film’s bad guy, known as the ‘honey baron’ (Kurt Russell), is a cheat but also has a good side.
It’s an easy watch and the ensemble cast make for delightful rubes, only it rambled on for too long. I liked McConaughey here (this was a tailor-made role for him to show-off his rugged country boy talents}, and Angelina LookingGlass showed flashes of having a sly humor and might have a future in the movies.
It played at the SXSW Film Festival.
REVIEWED ON 3/22/2025 GRADE: B
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