April 27, 2006

Akeelah and the Bee
Directed by Doug Atchison
Opens April 28

By LESTER GRAY
Arts Editor

Spelling bees, while occasionally covered on ESPN, hardly threaten the NBA as a spectator sport. But it may surprise some that long before Michael Jordan even had a sneaker to lace up, education far surpassed athletics as the race leveler of choice among Blacks. Words — writing and spelling — were for the most part accessible. Nobody could Jim Crow you out of a book, dictionary, or piece of paper.

Whether writer/director Doug Atchison’s script for Akeelah and the Bee, which won the Nicholl Fellowship in Screenwriting competition, consciously draws upon this history is not clear, but the retro theme is right on time. Refreshingly absent are game-saving three-pointers, tired locker room disquisitions about “how far we’ve come,” and athletes taking SAT mulligans. Atchison allows his characters imagination and pliability, and we all get rewarded in the process.

The eponymous Akeelah (Keke Palmer) is an 11-year-old girl with a love of vocabulary. Living in South Central Los Angeles’ infamous Crenshaw neighborhood (the reining synonym for the impoverished and violent Black ghetto), the pretty preteen’s facility for spelling and definitions generates as much enmity as admiration among her peers. That she comes to apply her skill competitively is due solely to the coaxing of a public relations–minded principal, who badly needs funding for his school.

Serving as a curious impediment to Akeelah’s progression toward the national spelling bee is her mother, Tanya (Angela Bassett). She admonishes her daughter to put aside word studies and concentrate on homework, a sentiment more appropriate to an athletics-versus-academics debate. The passion of Tanya’s objections, which grows with her daughter’s victories, appears to be spawned from a fear of losing her daughter to success— not uncommon in impoverished families. While central to the narrative, this conflict is nonetheless clumsily explained away at the end of the film.

Akeelah’s only champion, albeit a reluctant one, emerges in the sullen Dr. Larabee (Laurence Fishburne), an African-American professor on sabbatical from UCLA. A former spelldown finalist himself, he appreciates the difficulties faced by someone of Akeelah’s background in competing against beneficiaries of sophisticated coaching and greater resources. Unfortunately, his ability to bequeath his insight and wisdom is hindered by his own personal struggles.

In need of a support team, the precocious orthographer bravely ventures outside her racially exclusive enclave to study with other spellers, to one of whom she has endeared herself even while competing against him. While these forays into upscale neighborhoods intimidate her friends and family, Akeelah handles them with the ease of thumbing through a pocket edition of Webster’s.

This is a story designed for rooting, cheering, and the shedding of tears. It succeeds wonderfully in spite of its prosaic triumph-against-adversity platform. Akeelahs’s values are what save the day. She never loses sight of what really matters, and that quality, unlike special athletic and academic gifts, is something to which everyone can aspire. n

J.R. Villarreal and Keke Palmer in Akeelah and the Bee.