Akeelah and the Bee (Full Screen Edition)

I use it to spend time with my kids

My students LOVED this movie! They “played” spelling bee for days after! 😊

I am a 56 year old child who always dreamed of being in the big spelling bee. My Dad put me to bed with a spelling word from the time I was 7. I remember he taught me "mendacious" and "flaccid." Now that I am older I think that was a funny choice. I asked him what it meant, and he said it was soft, sort of mushy, not in good tone, like with a muscle in your stomach. Ha ha. I have never seen that word used with any other than "penis." I have not read any books featuring flaccid stomachs.Unfortunately, I went to free school during the age for the bee, and my parents never organized a bee at our school. Too bad, it was a small school.This movie is about the friendship between a lonely curmudgeon of a professor who is retired because of the death of his wife and daughter. The principal of the school asks him to come and see Akeelah spell. He does, and quizzes her rapid fire at the bee. She does fantastically, and runs out of the room in tears when she cannot spell "pulchritude."When she gets in trouble and has to go to summer school, the principal arranges for her to get spelling coaching from the curmudgeon instead of summer school. They have a delightful relationship. The girl with no father fits well with the man who lost his daughter. So well it scares him, and he quits after a long bit of coaching. She learns how to get support from other people, and makes it to the finals in the BEE of course.SPOILER ALERT: the curmudgeonly coach shows up at the contest, pays for her family and friend to go with her. He surprises her around the last word of course. She has her values tested when she is tied with a kid who lost once and it his last chance. His parents are pressuring him very hard, especially his father. She almost throws the contest for him. She learns a big lesson from this nasty kid turned nice guy.

This film is such a delight. It shows the beauty and grace that comes from a girl who lives in the very poor areas of the world. Her family lost her father from a gun shot. She happens to be fantastic at spelling and eventually becomes a member of a well known spelling bee. Wonderful to see what she has to do mind wise to be in this difficult spelling bee and she has a dual win with another challenging champion.Bravo !

I have a collection of movies that I actually love to watch over and over again because they make me comfortable. I will watch them before I go to bed to relax, or just keep them on the background while I'm doing laundry because I don't necessarily have to watch intensely, I can just keep doing what I'm doing while listening to it and already know what's happening in the movie. This is one of my main top 10 favorites. It is such a cute movie, and of course I have my kids watch it with me all the time. This movie actually inspired my daughter to practice her spelling when she was in second grade, and it helped her want to learn to spell big words so that she could be in a spelling be at her school. This is such a wholesome story about perseverance, bravery, love of community, and how it sometimes takes a village but with practice and commitment you can accomplish things that at the time can seem impossible.

Liked the story and the characters.

I had always thought there were only two possible outcomes to the 'pyramidal' type suspense story-- that is, the type like 'Rocky' or 'The Karate Kid' that takes a central character to an ultimate confrontation, with either an uplifting 'Agony of Defeat' type of climax or a 'Success of Course' type outcome. [The underrated Searching for Bobby Fischer is another excellent example.]Silly me!There's at least one more kind of ending possible, and Akeelah and the Bee provides a perfect example of it. I'm sure it will be copied extensively as time rolls forward, but this movie is the first one to feature it, and the surprise is delightful. In other words, it doesn't end the way you think it will, NO MATTER HOW you thought it would!It's an original story in some other ways as well: (1) It looks at stereotyping from several different angles, not just the standard two or three; (2) the standard 'gruff curmudgeon' authority figure [played by Laurence Fishburne] that is normal fare in these kinds of plots is in this case a very vulnerable person who is willing to let that fact show, and this gives a depth to the story that is usually missing; (3) the 'bad guy' opponent has demons of his own to fight, paralleling in many ways the demon that the protaganist faces. This gives a complexity to the competitions that is almost always missing in this type of story.The tale revolves around the title character, Akeelah, who lives in southwest Los Angeles, with all of the issues that such a setting implies. She becomes hooked on 'spelling bees,' and in spite of heavy odds against her participation creates for herself the dream of competing in the national championship that is broadcast on ESPN every year. It's no spoiler to say that she does indeed get there, surmounting odds of many kinds. But it *would* be a spoiler to say what happens once she does reach her goal, so I'll remain silent on that point. (Just remember what I said earlier, about there not being only two possible outcomes to such a plot.)What I won't stay silent about is my enthusiasm for the director, the screenplay, the casting, the editing, and, most of all, the star of this motion picture. And when I say Star I'm not exaggerating. Keke Palmer steals this show, from the first instant she appears. Nor is she merely a very bright child [or very young adult, if you prefer] who can get away with playing herself provided there's an excellent director handy. There IS an excellent director handy, but no way does she play herself, as will become apparent when you watch the extensive interviews with her that are part of the extras in this package.Since making this movie, she has become quite successful in the music business, as a singer and star of music videos. But in that genre, she is an entirely different person from the character she portrays in this movie, as well as being yet again distinct from the 'real' Keke in the interviews. She's a complex person with a multitude of talents, and the producers of this movie are luckier than they can imagine that they found her for the role. She's PERFECT.The same can't be said for the motion picture as a whole. For one thing, this type of formulaic plot has become so familiar to us that certain scenes can be 'smelled' long before they show up. [Credit the editors that they cut one such scene out before the movie was released, though it still exists in the extras on the DVD.]Another problem is that when the 'bad guy' is both a kid and a member of a minority himself, it's hard to stay mad at him for very long, but he does a good job [along with the excellent direction] of keeping the 'bad vibes' flowing as long as he possibly can.As is true of most really good 'children's movies,' this isn't a movie just for children. There's a lot in it for appreciative adults as well. I recommend it highly, for viewers of all ages.

Great movie! Watched it alone and then with my school-age grandchild who loved it! Very inspiring!

This is a great movie for all ages!

J'ai utilisé ce film en classe. Il n'est pas en français, uniquement sous-titres en anglais mais accessible pour des élèves dès la 5ème. C'est émouvant et plein de bons sentiments. Akeelah est une jeune fille de banlieue pauvre, depuis la mort de son père elle épèle tous les mots. C'est ainsi qu'elle est sélectionnée pour le National Spelling Bee contest, une compétition très prisée aux USA. Franchement c'est un chouette petit film pour les enfants et jeunes ados.

My family all like this movie. The acting is excellent and the story holds our interest. There are no controversial themes and no unacceptable language.

Great movie, suggested to me by a friend.

Though this film was made in America, the three main child characters are from ethnic backgrounds and echo situations that arise elsewhere, particularly in multicultural Britain (which is my neck of the woods). This would be an important film to be shown in some of the problem schools in cities where low self esteem in the pupils has resulted in bad behaviour and slipped standards. However, a viewing in private and all white schools would also help to improve their opinion of intelligene within the Black community. We should definitely be producing more films with this up-beat message.