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Eleven-year-old Akeelah (Keke Palmer) feels shunned at school, since all the teachers point her out for doing so well (she skipped the second grade) and all her peers mock her for the very same reasons. As such, she is reluctant to compete in the inaugural spelling bee until the principal (Curtis Armstrong), smelling an opportunity to improve the school’s image and receive more funding, practically blackmails her into participating with her rather poor attendance record. Her performance impresses Dr. Larabee (Laurence Fishburne), a colleague of the principal and former champion who decides to coach Akeelah for the competitions to come, where she makes friends with the genial Javier (J.R. Villarreal) and enemies with Dylan (Sean Michael), an arrogant rival strictly trained by his stern father, no less. I don’t have to tell you twice who takes the top three spots at the regional level and proceed to face off nationally in Washington, DC, and if you have the slightest of doubts, this movie might very well be the best thing you’ve seen since last night’s programming on the Hallmark Channel.

Writer/director Doug Atchison nails every single cliché in the overcoming-obstacles handbook, going from Akeelah studying amongst the sounds of family bickering and police choppers, to deciding to do the bee for her deceased daddy, to defying her callous mother (Angela Bassett) when she fails to see the point in all this spelling stuff, and so on and so forth all the way to the national championships. There are a few obligatory m-o-n-t-a-g-e-s, especially when the whole neighborhood decides to rally behind her, although the prospect of gangbangers helping young Akeelah study upon the hood of their Escalades leaves me slightly skeptical. Atchison only adds to the ick by ensuring that each character is a minority (Akeelah - black, Javier - Hispanic, Dylan - Asian), a factor which falls flat because he makes the racial factor seem incredibly obligatory. Oh, and all white kids are rich, snobby, and EVIL!, which just gives the bland proceedings all the flavor of dollar-store diet vanilla yogurt.

It is nice to see Fishburne in a mentor role for a change, although his dead daughter subplot becomes mildly overwrought very quickly, as the overall tone of the second act becomes especially heavy-handed, especially thanks to Bassett in the thankless role of official button pusher. The other kids are simply adequate as their flat characters, but the movie is only made watchable by the efforts of Palmer, who easily surpasses her previous work (well, anything has to be better than Madea’s Family Reunion) and carries the film by naturally expressing the concerns and doubts of a girl in her position, as unoriginal as the role itself may be. Her effort to elevate such a drab character is the sole reason one can stomach Akeelah, although it just isn’t quite enough to merit a whole-hearted recommendation.

If you want to see a better film, go rent the documentary 'Spellbound.' If you really want to do worse, 'Bee Season' might be more to your liking. Otherwise, 'Akeelah and the Bee' is simply a pedestrian production throughout that offers little reason to trouble yourself with it. After all, as long as Gwen Stefani can spell "bananas," I guess there is hope for anyone.

link directly to this review at https://www.efilmcritic.com/review.php?movie=14219&reviewer=409
originally posted: 05/12/06 05:17:36
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