Akeelah and the Bee 2006
I remember hearing good things about this movie and have had a free digital copy for a while and still never watched it. It is a very nice movie about an 11 year old girl in South Los Angeles who loves to spell and play Scrabble but doesn’t fit in that well at school. The movie is kind of by the numbers but the characters are good and it still has a lot of charm. She gets coached by Laurence Fishburn, a USC English professor with a semester off and some baggage. This is a role he can knock out of the park, which he does. Maybe it has fairy tale aspects as even hardened gang members root for this smart little girl, but not completely out of the realm of possibility. The movie is more likely to appeal to audiences than critics, but if you aren’t a critic, that should work fine.
Written: 25 Feb 2020
Owned on: Digital