Must See Movie: Akeelah and the Bee

I watched the movie Akeelah and the Bee last night and it's one of the best movies I've seen in a really long time.

Keke Palmer stars as Akeelah, an 11 year old girl who goes to school in the rough neighborhood of Crenshaw. She's a brilliant student but doesn't apply herself and cuts classes to hang out with her friends. But she always gets straight A's on her spelling tests and her principal asks her to enter their school's first spelling bee. She doesn't want to because she doesn't want to be made fun of by the other students but is forced to enter or else she'd be punished for her missed classes. She flies through the school's bee and catches the attention of Dr. Larabee (Laurence Fishburne) an English professor and former spelling bee competitor himself. Dr. Larabee takes Akeelah under his wing to attempt to coach her all the way to the national finals.

Meanwhile, Akeelah's mom (Angela Bassett) is against her entering the spelling contests because she sees them as a waste of time and wants Akeelah to just concentrate on her school work. She's a single mom (her husband past away) supporting 4 kids and with 1 in the Air Force, one raising a baby, and another a gang banger, she wants Akeelah to graduate high school, go to college, and live a successful life.

This was a very well written and acted film. Towards the end, it became very obvious how it was going to end, and I could see it coming a mile away, but then the writers threw a curve ball! It went exactly the way you knew it would but then they played off of that and delivered a very satisfactory ending which caught me by surprise in a very good way.

Keke Palmer was excellent as Akeelah and seeing Bassett and Fishburne reunited (they worked together on What's Love Got To Do With It) was also good to see. I also like the supporting characters like Curtis Armstrong (Booger from Revenge of the Nerds) as Principal Welch and the little boy who played Javier, the rich Hispanic kid who has a crush on Akeelah. His scene where he tries to stall for time is great.

Hollywood should try to make more films like this one instead of relying on remakes, sequels, and making TV shows into movies. Akeelah and the Bee was a fresh, inspiring film that has given me some new hope in Hollywood.

10/10!