Moustroll Good movie but grossly overrated

Odelecol Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

Erica Derrick By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Billy Ollie Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

lasttimeisaw This American indie, indubitably director/writer Victor Nunez's most well-known work, has hitherto earned Peter Fonda his sole acting Oscar nomination. Ulee Jackson (Fonda) is a widowed beekeeper in an unnamed town in Florida, who raises his two granddaughters Casey (Biel in her film debut) and Penny (Zima, a precocious heart-melting angel) all by himself because his son Jimmy (Wood) is serving time in jail and his daughter-in-law Helen (Dunford) is a congenital drug addict who takes flight in another town. It is difficult for a man like Ulee to raise two young girls, the elder Casey is in her rebellious pubescence and the younger Penny is perceptibly despondent in the humdrum days, only the arrival of a new neighbor Connie Hope (Richardson), a childless, twice-divorced nurse, proffers Penny some excitement, but Ulee remains courteous but distant. The season of tupelo is coming, which for beekeepers, it is the golden time of the year to produce the indigenous high-caliber tupelo honey, but Ulee's life has been dragged into a flurry of hapless incidents, after taking back an unconscious and drug-addled Helen from Eddie (Flynn) and Ferris (Weber), two wretches and former associates of Jimmy, he is browbeaten by them to find a hidden stash of cash whose where-about only Jimmy knows. Thanks to the professional succor from Connie, the family manage to help Helen go through her withdrawal and a gentle mutual affection burgeons between Ulee and Connie, meanwhile, Casey and Penny both lend a helping hand in the honey business, and finally, facing up the menacing Eddie and Ferris, Ulee must save his family once and for all from the past contraventions. On the one hand, ULEE'S GOLD is a genuine lover letter to apiculture, Nunez modulates a minute and patient angle to show audience its stock-in-trade, and Fonda is greatly hands-on in every step, often alone in the woods, ploughs on with adroitness and dedication, never belies that he is play- acting; on the other hand, what quietly distills through the happenings, sometimes raucous (Helen's detox process), sometimes dramatic (visiting Jimmy in the prison, is he an ingrate or a prodigal son?), sometimes threatening (the murky suspense in fetching the cash under duress), is a lone wolf who is perspicacious and mettlesome in wrestling with the downside of his life, and a patriarch figure who is given an opportunity to single-handedly re-direct his son's family back to the right orbit, plus a second chance in his love life too. Thus, the resultant outcome is a slow-built but absorbing yarn tampered with a tinge of complacency. Still, Mr. Fonda's performance is the chief takeaway, a reclusive macho paterfamilias who, nevertheless, conceals a tender heart underneath, is a character too make-believe to be authentic, but we are so caught up in his attempt to clear off all the obstacles and ultimately, as contrived as the story ends, we are not attacked by the usual bathetic aftertaste, which all owes to Fonda's upright, unfeigned and taciturnly riveting presentation of an ordinary hero is bent on doing the right thing.

evanston_dad Peter Fonda gives a quietly effective performance as a man struggling to reconnect with his troubled family in this indie drama from 1997."Ulee's Gold" is the kind of film that's composed of long takes and longer silences. Fonda is taciturn and even unlikable at times -- ditto his daughter-in-law and grandchildren, who he must care for when his son goes to prison. Fonda revealed a talent in the later half of his career that he hadn't -- "Easy Rider" aside -- let the world see before, and hasn't really let anyone see since, to tell the truth. It was enough to win him a Best Actor Academy Award nomination, but not enough to help him beat Jack Nicholson, in a year when the Academy wanted to send a message to the independents that the major studios were alive and kicking.Grade: B+

cmvoger Among other attractions, this film gives Peter Fonda the best role he's had in years. I would wish him a few more opportunities like that one, in short order. The best of luck to him. The workday that Ulee spends with his younger granddaughter, his explanations to her about beekeeping, help the audience understand what's going on. And the granddaughter's lectures to the doped-out mother draw a parallel between the integrity of the hive and the mother's re-entry into the family. Also, this movie has a lot of common sense about action sequences. When Ulee was attacked by the two vicious punks, things would have gone horribly wrong if he had turned into Steven Segal and started kicking people through the walls, turning it into an action epic. It would have ripped the fabric of a very realistic story. He outsmarts them instead. He traps the more vicious of the men behind a door and holds his weight against it, while he talks the less stupid one into calming down. Believable. And the same for the resolution at the end. Not a Hollywood feel-good, "everything's OK now" fadeout. But the psychos are incarcerated, Ulee's son has reason to feel optimistic about parole, and the family members are talking to each other. The daughter-in-law may even stay dried out.A very good film, deserving of the widest possible distributioncm

bobbobwhite Peter Fonda as Ulee did his best to recreate his dad Henry in this film, and was nearly as effective as Henry would have been in the same role. Peter does not have Henry's fiery blue eyes that displayed an inner fierceness that belied his outward calm so Peter, with his mother's looks and his very laid back personality, has to work harder(without appearing to do so) to have a similar Fonda impact but he did it so well here and better than I thought he could. This role was a perfect fit for him and he was terrific in it, and he is a credit to the great Fonda name as a result. Ulee's Gold might have been a Oscar instead of the honey he made as a bee-keeper(Peter was nominated but did not win).As a reclusive and introverted Viet Nam vet with a painful war disability, an extreme family dysfunction, and a declining but backbreaking bee-keeping business that's rapidly facing extinction, Ulee has a lot of hard work and stress interfering with his taxing efforts to just get by from day to day. When thrown into a deadly family crisis caused by his criminal and convict son, he reluctantly gets deeply involved in trying to solve it and almost gets killed for it.Many viewers may think this film was paced too slow, but most filmmakers trying to portray a rural story set in the South get the pacing all wrong, as city boy filmmakers never understand why Southern folks move slowly and seem to think slowly, thereby appearing stupid and/or lazy, so they try to speed up the story and ruin it by doing so. I was a country boy early on and understand that carefully-paced, oven hot-country behavior very well and was pleased that Ulee's Gold was paced just right, which to me was the critical factor in making this film believable, along with the spot-on acting of the lead characters.Pat Richardson of Home Improvement was terrific as the helpful tenant/eventual love interest, as her character's basic human goodness, calmness, and sweet motherly nature showed again an example of perfect casting, as that is Pat.See this good story with lots of tension and realistic Southern pacing, and great acting in the leads. Plus, very interesting visuals of bee-keeping details made this one of my favorite films set in the South.For other great films set in the South, see The Trip To Bountiful, Places in the Heart, and Sling Blade.