S-u-c-c-e-s-s

It's always disappointing to see a good movie flounder at the box office, especially a movie that you just know audiences would really enjoy if they just knew about it. If they only knew they should see it. Akeelah and the Bee finished a disappointing 8th at the weekend box office, just barely cracking $6 million and posting by far the lowest per screen average of the four new wide releases.

A movie this enjoyable is guaranteed to find an audience somewhere, but I recommend seeing it now, don't just wait for DVD. Get in on it early!

Akeelah's simple inspiring story of an 11 year-old inner city girl who sets her sights on competing in the National Spelling Bee isn't the most original tale ever told (although the spelling bee material does give the familiar underdog-sports-story a fresh spin) and the movie does have its share of cheese. But luckily the film can afford the occasional corny moment because it has so much else going for it, most notably the strong central performance of 12 year-old Keke Palmer.

Writer/director Doug Atchison's script may have a few false moments (Akeelah's siblings feel more like stock types—noble military man, gangbanger, single mom—than real people, and the competitive world of spelling bees feels awfully small once the film gets to the national level) but Palmer's performance never wavers. It would be an extraordinary acting achievement for anyone, let alone someone so young and relatively inexperienced.

Palmer is backed up by a very fine cast including Laurence Fishburne and Angela Bassett in their first screen pairing since their Oscar-nominated turns in What's Love Got To Do With It (and even if Bassett seems a tad too buff for an inner city mother, her work is still a strong reminder that this actress deserves better, more frequent, work than she gets). There are also several other winning performances from younger actors including Sahara Garey as Akeelah's best friend, Sean Michael as her spelling rival and, most of all, J.R. Villarreal as her...love interest. Villarreal is more of a typical child actor than the effortlessly natural Palmer but fortunately that suits the role, and the two young actors create the kind of genuine chemistry that actors three times their age often struggle to achieve.

The writing and direction are solid, the performances elevate it to another level and Akeelah is ultimately the kind of movie I'd recommend to anyone. That doesn't necessarily make it great but it does mean it's too good to miss.