 Akeelah and the Bee is essentially a sports movie in which the sport is spelling. Most critics are charmed. Dana Stevens in the New York Times calls it "an underdog tale that manages to inspire without being sappy." Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun-Times gives it four stars and calls it "an uncommonly good movie, entertaining and actually inspirational and with a few tears along the way." (Variations of the word "inspire" are spelled out in virtually all of the reviews.) Ann Hornaday in the Washington Post describes it as "a thoroughly winning family film." It does have a few detractors. Rick Groen in the Toronto Globe and Mail is one of them. He begins his review this way: "The word to spell in this round is DERIVATIVE. Language of origin? Hollywoodese." Fellow Torontonian Susan Walker writes in the Star: "The latest spelling bee movie is a Starbucks Entertainment product, and it has a made-to-order feel about it, kind of like a compilation album." Michael Booth in the Denver Post agrees with those negtive assessments -- in a way. He writes: "Akeelah and the Bee carefully diagrams every cliché we've absorbed from sports movies, urban dramas, mentor flicks and precocious-children portraits. Yet it works." |
