I’ve been waiting for this movie for a long time. The plot circles around Akeelah Anderson (Keke Palmer), age 11, who lives in the toughest of the toughest areas in South Central Los Angeles. Akeelah, however, has a gift – she’s an excellent speller. Her environment, however, is not conducive to encouraging her to use her gift and she gets caught up in the trap so many black kids are stuck in with a culture that celebrates ignorance and denigrates cerebral achievement. This all changes when she meets English professor Dr. Joshua Larabee (Laurence Fishburne, paying penance for those horrible Matrix sequels) who becomes her coach for the National Spelling Bee.
Why do I like this movie so much? Because its the first film in a long time I can think of that is entertaining in its portrayal of positive intellectualism among black Americans. I almost stood up and cheered when Dr. Larabee makes a strong stance against Akeelah’s usage of bastardized language (aka ebonics) — in order to succeed at the bee and in life, she will have to use proper English.
My only quibble was with Angela Bassett as the (very buff) and widowed mother, whose initial indifference to her child’s academics is not clearly detailed.
It could be argued that you know where the movie is going, but its still a very good trip on the way there and I hope maybe this film can make some sort of dent in a culture I see continually going of the rails into despair.
amen OW…..
ditto
I checked with the resident expert on “Cold Case” — my 15 yr old son.
The episode is from this season, and was highly rated, so it’s bound to be repeated — Saving Patrick Bubley — watch for it.
There was an episode of Cold Case with a similar theme. I won’t give anything, but it involves ghetto life, and the cryptic initials. “W – E – B – D”
I realize now I’ve confused this fictional story with both the recent documentary about spelling bees (”Spellbound”) as well as “Bee Season”. Man, Hollywood is shameless about cloning movies.
It’s Gullah country, off the South Carolina coast. Pat Conroy’s The Water is Wide, filmed as Conrack
I have more respect for your film opinion, OW, now that your stance on the IMO crappy matrix 2 and 3 is clear.
As well as treading on the path Spellbound trod first, there’s also Lean on me and the one with Edward James Olmos teaching Calculus in the Ghetto. Everyone can be inspired by a good teacher, and the life-changing-teacher-flick has a lot of miles left in it, particularly when the story is true.
My favourite one had John Voight in the Florida Keys…..
Thankyou Frank, you have saved me a search. Haven’t seen it for a while, and can now just look for it to rent/buy.
You’re welcome…
I saw the end of Teachers [Nick Nolte] yesterday — another good one.
My all – time favorite (I give it 5 Kleenex boxes) will always be To Sir, With Love
I linked to and quoted this post from US Liberals at About.com.