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Akeelah and the Bee
Critics' Reviews
 'Akeelah' Pushes Your Buttons By John Hartl, Film critic, MSNBC Like last year's "Bee Season," the Tony-winning "The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee" and the Oscar-nominated documentary "Spellbound," writer-director Doug Atchison's "Akeelah and the Bee" finds behind-the-scenes drama at a spelling contest for precocious children. The subject is surprisingly surefire — so much so that you wonder why Atchison works up such a sweat trying to demonstrate its potential. His movie is pretty irresistible, especially if you succumb easily to emotional stories about teacher-student relationships, but he sometimes works too hard to make emotional connections and tie up loose ends. Akeelah, played by the delightfully natural Keke Palmer, is an 11-year-old African-American from South Los Angeles, clearly talented but a problem student. She's casual about her homework, and her attendance record is lousy. Her distracted, widowed mother (Angela Bassett) fails to recognize her uncanny ability to spell difficult words, but her principal (Curtis Armstrong) sees it, and so does an embittered teacher (Laurence Fishburne, who also co-produced the movie). The early scenes betray a tendency on Atchison's part to create trumped-up drama, as Akeelah forges a signature to enter a spelling bee. When her mother discovers the subterfuge and creates a scene, she has a showdown with the principal. The episode is played for maximum suspense, as Akeelah tries both to placate her mother and get back to the spelling bee before she's disqualified. Unfortunately, the episode doesn't do much more than artificially raise the tension level. It's not really necessary to keep the story rolling. Indeed, it's a distraction from the real drama here: very young kids competing with each other while discovering a bond they can't help but share. Whenever Atchison focuses on Akeelah's interaction with the other kids, especially her charmingly persistent would-be boyfriend Javier (J.R. Villarreal) and her robotic rival Dylan (Sean Michael Afable), the movie seems honest and fresh. Especially effective is Akeelah's manipulation of the final rounds of the Scripps National Spelling Bee, as she takes control of the situation and surprises just about everyone. Also quite affecting are the scenes in which Akeelah is essentially alone, doing her homework and communing with the memory of her father, while police sirens play on a continuous loop in the background. Locked in a cubicle, surrounded by clear evidence of the potential for street violence, she's already seen too much of this corner of the world. At moments like these, Atchison recalls the more contemplative touches in ghetto classics such as John Singleton's "Boyz 'N the Hood." At first glance, Akeelah may seem little more than a trash-talking brat, but Atchison gradually reveals the reasons for her insolence and despair. So does Palmer, who almost erases the predictability of Akeelah's softening toward her frustrated teachers. By the time the movie's over, you may feel a bit bludgeoned — as if you'd been subjected to an overcooked afterschool special. It's the commitment of Atchison and his actors that ultimately wins you over and makes the movie's faults seem minor.
 AMG Review Perry Seibert The average sports movie has a very predictable plot. The misfit learns that he or she has a particular aptitude for the game, there is a coach who knows how to motivate and turns out to hide a heart of gold underneath the gruff exterior, our hero overcomes self-doubt, and eventually everyone gets to "The Big Game." Akeelah and the Bee follows these points at every turn, but the fact that the "sport" is spelling, along with the remarkable skill of the cast and crew, makes it a very strong entry in the sports movie genre. The superb Keke Palmer plays Akeelah, the young black girl from the inner city who through skill and determination battles her way into the Scripps Howard National Spelling Bee. Palmer feels like she was plucked right off the streets, but she is in fact a professional actress. She handles the deep emotional scenes with a combination of resolve and helplessness that dramatically underscore her character's intelligence and vulnerability. Laurence Fishburne has an ability to express intellectual and/or physical authority alongside a charm that can make that authority seem either less or more threatening depending on the character. He embodies Akeelah's mentor, Dr. Larabee, with the sadness and severity of a man cut off from his own feelings, but smart enough to know this. Angela Bassett, as Akeelah's mother, must play the most difficult part in the film. How do you portray a mother who is opposed to her child being in a spelling bee without coming off like a monster? Because the screenwriters have done an excellent job fashioning an effective if obvious backstory for her, Bassett is never afraid to make her character unappealing when she needs to be. Anyone can see where and how Akeelah gets her dogged determined streak. The supporting cast, especially the group of actors who play Akeelah's friends and competitors, all feel natural and are very appealing. There are no surprises in the film, just rock-solid acting and flawless craftsmanship from the writer/director Doug Atchison. If nothing else, Akeelah and the Bee showcases the joys of solid story structure married to talented artists. ~ Perry Seibert, All Movie Guide | ||||||||||||||
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