- Title: Akeelah and the Bee
- IMDb: link
How cool are spelling bees? The film asks that question multiple times and the answer shifts from person to person over the course of the film including our title character. Akeelah and the Bee actually makes the National Spelling Bee look pretty darn cool. Now c’mon folks, that should pique your interest.
Akeelah (Keke Palmer) is an underachieving student in Crenshaw, California with an older sister (Erica Hubbard) who has a baby, a brother (Julito McCullum) who wants to become a gangbanger, and a mother (Angela Bassett) who works all the time and has little time or patience for her kids’ problems and screw-ups.
Akeelah’s teacher (Dalia Philips) notices Akeelah’s talent in spelling words far beyond the normal vocabulary for a child her age and brings this to the attention of Principal Welch (Curtis Armstrong) and his friend, a former college professor, Dr. Joshua Larabee (Laurence Fishburne) who has been looking for a local child to train for the National Spelling Bee.
Akeelah is pushed into the spelling bee (which she would rather not take part for fear of looking uncool) but her early success makes her want to continue against her mother’s wishes who see such activities taking time away from her real schoolwork. She starts to train with Larabee and a larger world begins to open up both mentally as she learns new words and where words come from and physically as she meets other children (J.R. Villarreal, Sean Michael, Sara Niemietz) from surrounding areas who also want to win the National Spelling Bee.
The film is as much about how Akeelah’s interest and participation changes her as it is about how it transforms those around her inluding her best friend (Sahara Garey), Dr. Larabee, her mother, and the entire community who with each of Akeelah’s successes become more invested in her journey. Though when the film develops into the 80’s training montage with the entire community taking part (including the ganbangers) I did groan a little.
The performances are outstanding all around, and even though the adults are fine it is the children who own this film. Keke Palmer owns the film and holds her own against Bassett and Fishburne in her scenes with them. And J.R. Villarreal is a break-out star just waiting to be discovered who almost, almost, steals the film with his infectious good humor.
If the film has any failures it’s how thinly written the adults are compared to the children. There’s no reason for Akeelah’s mother to be so against an academic outlet her underachieving child is actually interested in, and making her the villain of the early half of the film is a disservice to both Bassett and the script. And of course Fishburne’s character can’t just be a former teacher tying to help out a child from his community, but instead hides a secret pain tha will of course parallel events that occur during the film to help heal him and make him whole. And the other parents present in the film are simple jokes from those willing to cheat to others pressuring their children to win unwilling to accept failure.
Yes the film’s falls into contrived traps and simplistic story elements at times, but somehow these never drag it down. Maybe it’s the spelling bee, maybe it’s the young cast, or just maybe it’s such a warm-hearted and likeable film it would take a robot not to melt at least a little. It’s an enjoyable and even exciting film that audiences of all ages can enjoy. This isn’t the first film of this type made (nor even the first with Fishburne – check out Searching for Bobby Fischer) but it’s heart is in the right place and is a good film that the entire family can enjoy together.