Linbeymusol Wonderful character development!

RyothChatty ridiculous rating

Pluskylang Great Film overall

Lucia Ayala It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

Rosemary (zelda1964) In this film we see two awesome superstars of Hollywood.Lawrence Fishbourne and Angela Bassett worked great together,in the Tina Turner biopic What's Love Got to Do With It; Here, Bassett plays a mother of a sweet young girl,Akeelah.After her father dies,Akeelah wants to pay honor to him,by entering a nationwide spelling bee.She learns some valuable lessons in her journey of "self discovery".I like the way she teaches her rival's father some important tools to learn.Through her brilliant "professor",Akeelah acquires humility,and understands that pride is a virtue that gets you nowhere in Life. Her rival's father learns that people are subject to downfall,and cannot "win" all the time.I love this film and am amazed at the performances! Through Akeelah,everyone is "cut down" a notch lower than they believe they are. I say Bravo to the cast,who shine!

Brian Wright As a libertarian who understands, more or less, the powerful causal factors that work from the outside to keep the down-and-outers down and out, it still does my heart good to recognize that any individual is capable of rising above his circumstances. In the case of Akeelah, the way out is through language. One sees very quickly that not only is the spelling competition mostly about language, the development of superior language skills is mostly about morality. If I had to pick another movie that exemplifies the truth of the previous sentence, it would be Hoop Dreams... also focused on poor black children trying to move ahead through special skills.In Hoop Dreams, more generally than in Akeelah and the Bee, you see how lack of English ability—particularly reading and writing, yet also as one's speech reflects the ability to think clearly—is the crucial determining reason for failure economically......For my complete review of this movie and for other movie and book reviews, please visit my site TheCoffeeCoaster.com.Brian Wright Copyright 2009

MrGKB ...for two reasons: one, it features a lovely, nuanced performance from a young actor, Keke "The Wool Cap" Palmer, who will most definitely be a performer to watch over the next several decades, and two, it reunites Lawrence "The Matrix" Fishburne and Angela "The Score" Bassett in roles decidedly different from those they played in "What's Love Got to Do With It?" Beyond that, I'm sorry to say, "Akeelah and the Bee" is pretty much Movie-of-the-Week manipulative and as formulaic as a WWF match. Clichés and stereotypes abound, and even the ending is straight out of the feel-good "everyone's a winner!" playbook (and don't get me started on the absurdly easy word that pops up for Akeelah to wrap everything up in glorious, pseudo-ironic fashion). Nonetheless, I still give the film props for its positive message, if not its overtly rose-colored glasses. I still prefer "Spellbound" as a spelling bee drama; there's just as much tension rooting for the success of the contestants, and best of all, they're real people.

sddavis63 My first reaction to this movie when I heard of it was that it was just another of the now typical "underdog overcomes the odds" type of movie that's all too common today. I expected it, therefore, to be a decent movie (most of them are) but not really great. I was surprised. This movie really was superbly put together. It has an air of authenticity about it even though it's not based on reality, and I was absolutely blown away by young Keke Palmer, who played Akeelah perfectly. Akeelah is an 11 year old girl and spelling phenom who attends a rundown inner city school in South Los Angeles. Her principal recognizes her spelling prowess and convinces her to enter the competition leading to the Scripps National Spelling Bee. Palmer truly was Akeelah. She was likable and drew me into the movie the way many more experienced actresses would never be able to do. Lawrence Fishburne was also quite good as Dr. Larabee, a former UCLA English professor who becomes Akeelah's coach. He wasn't as dominating as Palmer, but that was in keeping with the nature of his character - Larabee being a troubled man dealing with demons of his own. Kudos also to Angela Bassett for a good performance as Akeelah's mom.Although it was not stated, I assumed this was based at least loosely on a true story, and found out afterward that it wasn't. That was a bit of a letdown, but since the movie never claimed the contrary I have nothing to complain about, although that does leave me free to mention a couple of plot points that otherwise (had they been true) would have been acceptable. The first revolved around the character of Dylan. It seemed to me that the portrayal of his family (and especially his dad) was an overly stereotypical portrayal of the Chinese family insisting on perfection from their children, whether it made their children happy or not. The other (since this never happened) is the overly happy ending to the whole thing. The ending was just too perfect - life generally isn't. Overall, though, this really was a superb movie that held me tight from the very beginning. 9/10