Honey (2003)

This is a beautiful little movie that just fun to watch. Okay it's full of clichés, predictable in some places, the dialogs are funky sometimes.

But who cares?

If you have nothing to do on a saturday night and your boyfriend/girlfriend just dumped you this movie will get you right up! You've got good vibes coming from all over this movie.

The dancing scenes are really tight, the casting has been done beautifully especially casting Jessica Alba. God she likes shines of the screen.

Go and see this movie, it's fun...

Oh but there is one thing that I kept noticing. And that was that the movie resembles "Glitter" in so many ways. I see that the scriptwriter Kate Lanier worked on both projects.

Fmovies: * out of **** stars

Yeah, yeah we've seen this before over and over. Small time dancer looking to make it to the big time breaks into the big time through luck of chance and communicates with kids through dance, while her parents hate what she does urging she get into another more distinguished profession, she begins breaking it big time, cue cameos from hip hop stars, and becomes a little too big for her friends, falls in love with the guy from the hood but is torn between her career and her man, la di da, and while I really wanted to like this movie, simply for its appeal and the first twenty minutes which really had me amped, this is pretty badly done.

The film, which is a retread of so many films with the same story and themes along with plot elements that are badly recycled from movies like "Dirty Dancing", "Saturday Night Fever", and I swear to god "Sister Act", has nothing new to offer. So we have Honey Daniels (Marie was taken), who loves to dance, the girl loves it and she teaches dancing at the local community center during the day, whether for pay or free it's never indicated, but she works at the bar at night, where does the chick get her energy? And where can I buy it? And, by luck of fate, is recruited by a video director after winning in a dancing duel (is there any other?) with a rival dancer and begins her career in the music video industry.

Now it's never indicated if she plans on being a dancer, a video dancer or just a teacher, but she has the best of intentions! The really hot neighborhood girl with a heart of gold, don't ya just love them? And we're never sure if the boys hang around her to dance, because she's nice, or if because they're trying to catch a peek at the good. And she begins to get more famous in the video industry with her skills choreographing dancers and becoming a hit in the industry.

Now the plot resolution is a bit thin and very jumbled here with a story that goes everywhere including a romance with the local barber whose badly set up with no back story and they get involved with one another. The problem is there's no conflict between Alba and Pfeiffer's character and their romance, there's no obstacles or chemistry so their relationship and focus of, is just boring, so inevitably Pfeiffer has no reason to be here other than as a plot device.

Then we witness a lot of sub plots involving the neighborhood kids including Lil Romeo who plays a local kid on the way to juvie with a life of crime, and we witness Honey get into the life of a music star directing videos, and of course canoodling with "famous" hip hop stars like Ginuwine and Tweet, and she experiences the same conflicts you'd expect like facing off against obligatory villains, and, suddenly out of the ballpark, comes this odd sub-plot where she conveniently stumbles onto an abandoned gym for sale and wants to raise money to teach and have the kids get off the streets and on the dance floor, but she doesn't have it, so she makes a bargain with the bank to give her thirty days to raise the money. Why thirty days? You naive fool, to stretch out the movie.

So, we have a plot development in the second half that should have been the focus of the entire film (raising the money for the center) while we tread through really bad sub plots and under-developed characters including her mother who has no emphasis and wants her daughter "to see everything in the world". Considering they're a low c

Jessica Alba is the star of the show; in this movie and in Hollywood since I don't know when. Her situation is something to detail about. Personally, I look at her and I think she has acted her whole life. Everyone talks about her everyday as if she had decades in the business, but she doesn't. I could say I believe she's done over ten films, when this movie was probably her fifth important role. She did a TV show I never saw for two years, but even before that, her name was on the poster of the movies she appeared in. She is a star by nature, a leading star; and "Honey" is the evidence that proves my statement.

When the film starts, Honey Daniels (Alba) is working at the bar in a disco serving the usual free drinks to her best friend Gina (Joy Briant): "One, please", the friend says, and two guys standing right by her get closer: "Make that three". Honey, with a big smile in her face, tells the guys: "Today is your lucky day", and then Gina interrupts: "Don't get to excited though; she'll not be here much longerÂ…She's gonna make it". So the guys ask how she's gonna make it.

Right away we find out Honey dances; and that she dances awesomely well. If Alba did her own dance moves I don't know for sure, but it always looks like her; in the dance floor, in the videos, in the dance lessons. OK, the film: Honey has a great talent for dancing and she could be a classic ballerina but she prefers to teach hip-hop in a place her mother owns. She goes to auditions, she works hard, and she ultimately gets recognized.

But Alonzo Brown and Kim Watson's story is not about "making it"; it is about the good-hearted people who fight for what they want, don't sell and don't quit. I don't even know if this is a veridical portrait of the hip hop world, but the video shoots seem real and I guess the artists/directors relationships should be how the movie shows them. What I wanted to say is that in the music world, mostly with hip hop (which I consider the easiest market today), when people make it, it goes over their heads, and they leave everything behind.

Although not Honey Daniels; she'll not fall into temptation, and she'll be there for the ones she cares for. It may sound too formulaic, but it's beautiful. Debutant director at the time Bille Woodruff, with previous experience from musical videos, shows us the nice face of his characters' world. Everything is shiny, everyone's happy, everyone's smiling. Yeah, sure some bad things happen, but everything will be ultimately worked out.

Great casting work with the youngsters, especially with Zachary Williams as a little boy, Raymond, who needs someone to watch over him; and Lil' Romeo in a tremendous and talented performance as the teenager Benny, who debates himself about being a gangster or a normal child. This plus Missy Elliott's cameo and Mekhi Phifer in the most charming performance of his career, and the some of the best lines as: "You peoples? Playa, playa, how'd you swing that? I've been trying' to be her peoples for weeks; ain't had no luck".

Not enough? Alba looks gorgeously beautiful in every outfit she wears and her acting skills are way above the film's requirementsÂ…She's stunning now and it is only the beginning.

Honey fmovies. I thought it was a great movie with a good storyline about a girl with a dream of making it big, helping out those who can't have that life. Yes, a little predictable at times, but the thought was there. The movie faced a lot of issues, from drug use and dealing to just generally believing in your dreams and no movie is complete without the fairytale love story. The dancing was awesome and Jessica Alba was amazing as Honey Daniels. People will give up their dreams if things don't turn out the way they wanted them to, but Honey stuck by hers and accomplished something she'd always wanted to. I think she is an inspiration for many.

Credit `Honey' with at least having its heart in the right place – even if its brain isn't always so easy to find. The ever sunny and optimistic Honey Daniels holds down two jobs in her increasingly hectic life – a bartender by night and a hip hop dance instructor by day. She has hopes of one day appearing in a music video, a dream that comes true when she catches the eye of a big time producer named Michael Ellis. Not only is Honey a smash in her first video appearance, but Michael immediately hires her as choreographer for one of his projects. As is typical in these strive-and-succeed tales, Honey soon discovers that success is not all that it's cracked up to be when Michael reveals his true colors, setting up conditions for her continued employment that she hadn't quite counted on (in other words, `put out or pull out'). But the always-undaunted Honey is not about to be knocked down that easily. She uses this little setback to start thinking less about herself and more about the street kids whom she sees turning into drug dealers and gangsters right before her rose-colored eyes. Filled with a righteous zeal and determination, she rallies the neighborhood to raise money for a new dance studio that can get the youngsters off the street, channel their energies in a more positive direction, and turn their lives around.

Only the most Scrooge-like curmudgeon could object to the positive, laudatory, pull-yourself-up-by–the-bootstraps message the film is trying to convey, and one would have to be downright inhuman not to feel uplifted by the final dance sequence. But good intentions and noble aspirations do not, in and of themselves, make for a quality film, and `Honey' is a long way from fitting that bill. The movie wants to be taken seriously as a realistic view of urban life but very little of what we see ever rings true, starting with Honey herself who, with her invariably perky demeanor, seems like a cross between Little Mary Sunshine and Mother Teresa in form fitting jeans and matching halter top. Everything that happens to her – from her meteoric rise in the music video world to her purchase of an empty store for her new dance studio to the benefit performance she and her dancers stage to raise the money for the project – all come about way too easily and with virtually no noticeable effort on her part. We never believe for a moment that any of this would happen in this way in the real world. Thus, `Honey' is really little more than an urban fairy tale, fine for children, I suppose, but not of much use for adults with a more pragmatic understanding of how life actually works.

Jessica Alba is no great shakes as an actress, though she has an infectious smile and a bubbly demeanor that work well on screen. But it is Zachary Williams, as the adorable, gap-toothed eight-year-old Raymond, who steals the show. Now that is one hell of an endearing little kid.

I got a three pack on a DVD at Wal Mart for ten dollars a few weeks ago and Honey was on the cover, never saw the movie, wasn't really interested when it came out, but I figured why not see it for ten dollars? Sounds silly, but who knows? Sometimes you find little treasures here and there that are cheap, plus, I remember that this was the film that really introduced Jessica Alba to the movie business industry. Of course, she's really huge now, and judging from this film, Honey that I watched last night, I have to say other than her looks, I am surprised she made it this far. I don't mean to sound horrible on the film or anything, but this just seemed like a giant rap video for me and the plot was way too average and predictable with some cheesy street slang.

Honey Daniels has three jobs: a bartender, a sales girl at a CD store, and also a dance teacher at her mom's little business to keep kids off the street. But more than anything, Honey wants to be a music video back up dancer. Her wishes come true when a director, Michael, welcomes her to the dance floor and makes her a choreographer. All her dreams are coming true, until she realizes that she forgets the more important things in life that mean so much to her. She eventually wants to open a club of her own to help out the neighborhood kids.

Honey has the typical street slang which I didn't find attractive, you just can't take it seriously. Alba, she's such a pretty girl, BUT, I'm very sorry, the girl cannot act, I didn't feel an ounce of sympathy or compassion for her character, she played off as this naive little thing, when she could have played it more smart and strong. Not to mention what was the whole Missy Elliot dialog? "What is this? This? This? Ugh? Ugh?"... it was supposed to be funny, but Missy comes off flat. Mekhi should have had more screen time, the guy is the only one with talent in the film. The dance moves are good, but I just wish they wouldn't have made this into a giant rap video.

2/10