AKEELAH AND THE BEE (2006)

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This movie is apt to be a tear-jerker but not because of its unhappy moments. The happy moments are the ones that bring on the tears.

It’s a story about–of all things–a spelling bee. The National Spelling Bee, to be exact. And how Akeelah Anderson (beautifully played by Keke Palmer), an African-American girl, works to make it to each level of the contest.

A movie all about spelling and words and their meanings and derivations–and how a whole community gets caught up in the idea of Akeelah’s success. Probably unrealistic, but the enthusiasm that kindles this movie is remarkable.

It just misses becoming preachy and sounding like a cheerleading squad promoting the value of Hard Work and Studying, but amazingly the story is better than just a heart-warming paean to words and the people who study them.

It’s a very believable story, right down to the tapping movements Akeelah relies on as a mnemonic device to help her to spell.

This isn’t a movie about culturally underprivileged African-Americans. Akeelah is a confident little girl, one who smiles in quiet recognition as she hears the sound of a rap song coming from a passing car full of white teenagers while she herself is using public transportation to get to a remote suburb where she will meet with a couple of her spelling bee rivals.

When her coach (Laurence Fishburne), in a campaign to remove “black” elements from her speech, tells her not to use diss, she rushes to the dictionary and finds the word there–then has a few words to say about the constantly changing language.

The point that African-Americans have helped to build our language and our culture is made throughout the film but in subtle ways, without using a sledgehammer.

All of the principal characters–Akeelah’s sister and brother, her best friend, her mother, and her coach, as well as her two chief rivals–all are captivating. This is a very extraordinary movie.