"Akeelah and the Bee" (2006) - Movie Review

“October Sky”, “Finding Forrester”, “Good Will Hunting”, “The Man Without a Face” and the list can keep go on and on. “Akeelah and the Bee” joins the list. There is nothing new out here but somewhere in all of these movies, there seems to be a lot of satisfaction, even if it contains the same thing blended in different way. I guess “Akeelah and the Bee” was marketed as a movie for kids, but it has some nice good things for adult viewers as well. There are these usual oppositions, friends, downs, ups, publicity and yes, you know it all. But as I said, there seems to be more kind of satisfaction in the end. And it involves sweet little kids with the maturity and attitude of an adult and they amazingly fit.

Young Akeelah (Keke Palmer) feels she does not fit in the Crenshaw Middle School in South Los Angeles. Actually she is been detached from most people even from herself since her father died. She talks with the photo of his and solaces herself. Her mother Tanya (Angela Basett) has her hands full being a single mom maintaining three kids at home. She is at least relieved that her eldest son Devon (Lee Thompson Young) is making himself a great life, but still not able to cope up with the work and family. Akeelah feels left alone but she keeps herself busy by cracking up her spelling tests in school and shatters online Scrabble. Her English teacher suggests she participates in the school competition which in turn will advance her to district and slowly to Scripps National Spelling Bee competition. But she does not accept herself to step away from the environment which it assumes for itself as inadequate. With Devon’s advice, she participates and gets the attention of Dr. Larabee (Laurence Fishburne), who is been requested to assist her by her principal Welch (Curtis Armstrong). Then the usual seasoning and moulding up of Akeelah to gear her and advance in an interesting manner forms the remaining.

First things first, I felt really bad for how many interesting and beautiful words I am not aware of. The film uses those very nicely and at times elevates the level of maturity in the kids. It is a wonderful movie for kids. It has all the contents right and ripe. It does not over do the emotions but at the same time maintains those to indulge the viewers. As an adult, there are some reservations for myself to point out. Forming a nemesis for Akeelah to beat is fine, which is Dylan (Sean Michael) but making him stern face almost all the time becomes mildly irritating. It is true that there are fathers like that of Dylan’s, Mr. Chiu (Tzi Ma). When the environment changes and some of their own failures loom, it is been imposed heavily on their kids. Mr. Chiu does that to Dylan. Sometimes it gets over the top. Adding to it, is the cheeky sequence of Akeelah’s sister Kiana (Erica Hubbard) finding a kid getting help from her mom are some things to forget.

Most parts of the story are something every one is used to. It seems like Déjà vu at times too. The interactions with certain characters enables to make a mark of it own in the line up of the movies mentioned in the first paragraph of this review. The movie is about words and hence it needs proper toned and strong representation as Akeelah’s coach. Laurence Fishburne is an obvious choice. No one can forget his role of Morpheus in “The Matrix” and also his explanation to Neo about the concept of Matrix. He makes a perfect match on coach for Akeelah. His calm but strong voice forms a beauty of words when he says those.

What makes it sit right up is couple of the strong sharp and sweet turn in the events happening to Akeelah. In any of the same kind of movie, a group of characters comes as a timely help to the let down protagonist. For Akeelah, as her mother says, there are 50,000 coaches surrounding her. The whole community is helping her day in and day out. Even a gangster is sent back to his school days and the small competition he won. There lies good in every one of them and the movie properly uses them as to accelerate the story in interesting turn of events. Especially the final show down between Dylan and Akeelah is done well with proper justification. While it had all the emotions for a movie of kids and inspiration, it had that “extra” something to make it better off in its genre.