Are people serious about crying in this? *spoilers*

And they certainly never make a point of mentioning his allergies being a huge issue or anything...

When you're 17 a cow can seem dangerous and forbidden...am I alone here?

Childhood Friend of mine died when he was in his 40s getting stung. Left behind two kids and a wife. What a shock.

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They were wasps (or hornets) not bees. Also, they *stung* him (the other end); they didn't 'eat', or bite him.
He jolted them out of their nest and they defended their home, attacking him. It's highly probable his allergic reaction quickly began to subdue him; he'd be unable to think properly and his reflexes would suffer.

It IS cold to think the loss of a friend is funny, even if the movie handled it in a clumsy way.

To be fair to the original poster, he/she was not trying to be cold or heartless. They were just expressing an opinion that Thomas J's actual death scene was poorly executed and had some bad acting. I don't really agree, but it's a valid opinion to have.

The scenes after that are the ones that are tough to watch. If you get to the part where Vada runs away from her teacher without welling up, then you've developed a pretty strong resistance to sad movies. I don't cry a lot at films, but this one is as emotional as it can be. That was an impressive acting job that Anna did in the final act of the film.

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Whoa, how did you equate a first kiss at 11 years old to sex between minors and being killed off to avoid it? Yeah in a sense the writers "killed" him since they wrote the story, but much like in real life, he tragically died an untimely death due to a freak accident, it had nothing to do with what may or may not have happened between him and Vada.

I guess maybe it is different for boys (and maybe girls these days too...geeze I sound old, I promise I'm not that old) but a first peck on the lips for an 11 year old girl does not mean her next step would have been jumping in the sack. A first kiss between two best friends is about as innocent in the sex/love world as one can get...a kiss that clearly freaked them both out.

I'm thinking you missed the point of this movie. Both Vada and her dad were living life in the shadow of death...Harry because he was surrounded by it and was absorbing the grief of his clients, and his daughter because she was afraid of death...first her mother and then constantly seeing dead people brought to her house. It's just as Thomas Jay said, she's afraid of death so she is constantly worried she's dying...but worrying about dying is scarier than actually dying, because if she did and become one of them, she would fear them no longer.

The irony is that the thing that is probably a kids worst unrecognized nightmare, her best friend dying, is the things that actually helped her face death and to become less afraid of it. This was a coming of age story about life and death, it had NOTHING to do with hormones and teenage (or in this case child) sex.

I don't really see anything funny about the death of a child. And in the context of the film it was really sad for Vada and Thomas to lose each other. Very normal for this movie to bring some people to tears. Very abnormal not to even understand this normal reaction in other, more sensitive people.

They were absolutely Bees, they say it numerous times in the film...

Bumping this to state, I don't want to sound heartless it's not the fact he died by the bees that made it laughable it's how it was directed and Culkin's acting. His scream in TGS is the best part, that little bastard had it coming, and no one with half a brain can deny his acting performance in that movie was pure awful.