{"id":810660,"date":"2026-08-12T01:30:09","date_gmt":"2026-08-12T01:30:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/810660\/"},"modified":"2026-08-12T01:30:09","modified_gmt":"2026-08-12T01:30:09","slug":"the-rivals-of-amziah-king-review-honey-doesnt-make-it-sweet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/810660\/","title":{"rendered":"‘The Rivals of Amziah King’ review: Honey doesn’t make it sweet"},"content":{"rendered":"

It turns out that the honey business<\/a> isn\u2019t as sweet as it sounds: In the new movie \u201cThe Rivals of Amziah King,\u201d beekeepers steal from each other, poison rivals\u2019 insects and rip folk off. \u201cIt\u2019s not full of kind people,\u201d the title character warns.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Rivals of Amziah King\u201d isn\u2019t as sweet as it thinks it is, either. Instead of picking a single variety to explore, the movie is a maddening mishmash of genres \u2014 blending Quentin Tarantino\u2019s<\/a> sudden brutality, a coming-of-age tale, a heist flick, a revenge fantasy and a sweet, music-filled country hoedown.<\/p>\n

Matthew McConaughey<\/a> returns to the big screen playing the title character in what can only be called Matthew-McConaughey-turned-up-to-11 mode, pure Cheshire Cat smile, rascally wink and buttery, Southern gentlemanly charm. Suspenders and scruff on, cowboy boots snug, McConaughey is the one who makes everyone\u2019s life instantly better just by showing up.<\/p>\n

Written by Andrew Patterson<\/a> and James Montague and directed by Patterson, \u201cThe Rivals of Amziah King\u201d follows McConaughey\u2019s honey-producing King as he negotiates his patch of rural Oklahoma until he inexplicably leaves the movie at the hour mark and hands it off to Angelina LookingGlass, making her film debut.<\/p>\n

We meet King ordering chicken fried steak sandwiches and cherry Cokes as he plays the banjo in a quartet of musicians at a beloved food joint. That gets interrupted when authorities need his knowledge to find out who abandoned $250,000 worth of honey barrels on the road and King starts to investigate. Then someone gets a chunk of their skull \u2014 including ponytail \u2014 ripped off in an industrial accident and that takes over. Settle in, the whiplash is just beginning.<\/p>\n

King soon connects with his former foster daughter \u2014 that\u2019s LookingGlass, fierce and preternaturally grounded \u2014 who he gets to mansplain in the local ways, like what to eat at the potluck (\u201cThere\u2019s a story in every dish\u201d), life lessons (\u201cPatience is better than being smart\u201d) and beekeeping (\u201cEvery queen is a survivor\u201d). Bees here, if you didn\u2019t already get from the clunky writing, represent community, sharing and caring. <\/p>\n

Cinematographer M.I. Littin-Menz\u2019s camera techniques never settle down in this movie, like a puppy forever pulling on its leash. Early sequences employ frozen shots irritatingly dropped into the mix and later we have furious close-ups, quick cuts, quirky flashbacks, ethereal river sequences and lingering poetic images of close-up bees like from a documentary, a kinetic approach that seems not to have much faith in the actual story keeping viewers\u2019 interest alive. Music supervisor Winslow Bright swamps many scenes with loud choirs, loud banjo and loud strings.<\/p>\n

Maybe that\u2019s because as soon as you\u2019ve settled down for one genre, it gets hijacked by the next. Warm and extended moments of communal song \u2014 the great T Bone Burnett<\/a> had a hand in some of the outstanding Americana tunes like \u201cQuill\u201d with McConaughey exuberant, and \u201cJohnny Come Outside\u201d \u2014 are undercut by seeing kids smash their heads on school bus roofs or a cool Western-like tracking of a honey-stealing local rascal that is marred by his horrific, boiling-to-death murder. There are so many montages of honey production that viewers may qualify for a beekeeping certificate.<\/p>\n

Great turns are produced by Kurt Russell<\/a> as a lethal local kingpin who schmoozes his way past the law, and Jake Horowitz, a former Marine who knows how to plan a theft with military precision, mostly shirtless. One brazen theft here is of \u201cO Brother, Where Art Thou?\u201d and, however you liked that movie, you realize now how hard it was to actually pull off.<\/p>\n

Patterson likes to remind viewers of his Oklahoma bona fides, but much of the overlong movie was shot in Alabama. And that hints at what\u2019s wrong with \u201cThe Rivals of Amziah King\u201d \u2014 it just doesn\u2019t feel authentic, either in place or in story. Forget honey, it sort of leaves a vinegary taste behind.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Rivals of Amziah King,\u201d a Black Bear release that hits theaters Friday, is rated R by the Motion Picture Association for \u201clanguage and some grisly images.\u201d Running time: 130 minutes. Two stars out of four.<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

This review has been updated to correct that the former Marine is played by Jake Horowitz, not Owen Teague.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It turns out that the honey business isn\u2019t as sweet as it sounds: In the new movie \u201cThe…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":810661,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[344056,344057,2724,2356,88,26806,2538,118084,793,694,344058,344059,16826,223309,10633,206,9601,9600,344060,59523,196138,22148,795],"class_list":["post-810660","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-andrew-patterson","tag-angelina-lookingglass","tag-associated-press","tag-california","tag-entertainment","tag-film-reviews","tag-food-and-drink","tag-food-recipes","tag-general-news","tag-homicide","tag-jake-horowitz","tag-james-montague","tag-kurt-russell","tag-mark-kennedy","tag-matthew-mcconaughey","tag-movies","tag-ok-state-wire","tag-oklahoma","tag-owen-teague","tag-quentin-tarantino","tag-t-bone-burnett","tag-theft","tag-u-s-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/810660","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=810660"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/810660\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/810661"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=810660"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=810660"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=810660"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}