Akeelah and the Bee Reviews

Sentimental, manipulative, predictable and utterly charming, writer-director Doug Atchison's underdog tale revolves around an indifferent student who blossoms after heeding the siren call of competitive spelling. Eleven-year-old Akeelah Anderson (Keke Palmer) is both bored by her classes at Crenshaw Middle School, a struggling institution in South Los Angeles, and afraid of being ostracized as a brainiac, so she cuts classes, slacks off on homework and downplays her academic gifts. But the hours Akeelah spends playing computer Scrabble at home have made her into a bona fide spelling whiz, and Principal Welch (Curtis Armstrong) insists that she participate in the school's first-ever bee. She wins easily and impresses Welch's old friend Dr. Larabee (Laurence Fishburne), who made it to the Scripps Howard National Spelling Bee as a youngster and who reluctantly agrees to coach her for the district spelling competition. Akeelah isn't sure she wants to compete, and her widowed mother (Angela Bassett) — who already has her hands full supporting four children, including a teenage mother and a son who's on the fast track to trouble with the law — worries about exposing her youngest, who was only 6 when her father was gunned down by a stranger, to the psychological pressures of ferocious competition. And Akeelah gets off to a rocky start with Larabee, arriving late for her first session and sassing back when he chastises her. But once she accepts that he'll brook no street talk, insolence or false modesty, Akeelah flourishes, finding a friend and budding puppy-love interest in fellow competitor Javier (J.R. Villarreal) and a pitiless rival in Dylan (Sean Michael Afable), whose rigid father is determined that this is his son's year to shine. Meanwhile, Akeelah's beleaguered community comes together in support — everyone from hardworking families to neighborhood drug dealers are rooting for their local girl to go all the way to Washington, D.C., and snatch the National Spelling Bee trophy out from under the rich kids who glided in on a silver cloud of private tutors, after-school coaching and the assumption of privilege. Atchison's script won a Nicholl Fellowship from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and its canny blend of social uplift and formulaic storytelling is kept on an even keel by the uniformly fine performances. Palmer is a find, neither gratingly precocious nor insufferably cute, but it’s the reflected luster of her adult cast mates that allows her to shine.