If I had Akeelah's vocabulary, I'm sure I could come up with a word to describe this film. Director Doug Atchison, who oddly also directed The Pornographer, wrote this family film about a young girl growing up in a poor community in southern L.A. where being smart was definately not cool. Akeelah, played by Keke Palmer, who unfortunately made her screen debut in Barbershop 2, is an eleven year old girl who finds herself easily getting 100's on all her spelling tests and winning the high scores at Scrabble effortlessly, while her classmates fail without caring. The school principal, played by Curtis Armstrong ("Booger" from Revenge of the Nerds... that's right, her principal is Booger...) finally convinces her to enter into the school spelling bee. From there, she takes an inspirational journey that will have you feeling happy, hopeful, and actually a little giddy (without feeling corny.)
Feel-good family films are so hard to come by now. Everything has to be the depressing hard truth or the dirty comedy. Watching this film, I almost felt like a kid again, remembering all those underdog movies I grew up on. It's fun, and suspenseful (think of how edge of your seat the documentary Spellbound was.) Best of all, it promotes positive messages from studying, to family and community.
Now let's get past all this seemingly sugar-coated stuff. I hate corny, cheesy humor that film makers find it so necessary to put in kids movies nowadays. Appparently, humor can either be ridiculously dumb or dirty and foul. This movie definately proved that theory wrong. I was laughing quite a bit. Not only was I laughing, but I actually found myself unable to stop smiling when the movie ended. Granted, I felt like a dork, but those who I saw it with were doing the same thing.
Now, some may say it's feel-goodness is a major flaw, but I say this is not so! If every single film that came out was like this, then yes, it would be a bit much. But these genuinely good, inspirational FAMILY films are so hard to come by. And think about it: it's a FAMILY film. One that you would take your grandmother and your 4 year old cousin to. This is not a film that's meant for drinking night with the guys. Once you get past the fact that Starbucks produced it, you can see what a gem this little movie is. Plus, Laurence Fishbourne is in (and produced) it, so you can make Matrix references if you get bored. (Also, an adorable hispanic kid you'll fall in love with- J.R. Villarreal- and wonderful Asian stereotypes.) DEFINATELY go see this film if you have kids, know kids, or were a kid once yourself.
Overall Grade: A
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