Rating: 4 stars (out of 5)

This movie is formulaic, predictable and frankly, rated PG. Why bother reviewing it at all in a college newspaper? Because despite all its concessions, it works within a genre in order to break out of it. “Rocky” was formulaic but it also got to the heart of a young man from a bad neighborhood with no self worth who found something within himself that is worth noticing. Akeelah is a young girl growing up in south L.A., who is ridiculed by her classmates whenever she gets A’s on her spelling tests. She skips class and keeps her head down because she is so unhappy. Her principal, played by Curtis Armstrong (oh nevermind, it’s Booger!) convinces her to participate in the school’s first spelling bee instead of detention. He needs attention from the school board to get more funding, but she just wants to get through it without getting hassled. She wins easily and is introduced to Dr. Joshua Larabee (Laurence Fishburne) who is a college professor and former bee participant himself, who challenges her to rise above the fear she has of success. As she gets more involved with the world of spelling bees she makes new friends, deals with the support she gets from a community which once ridiculed her, and battles her mother who is just as scared of her daughter failing as she is herself.

This is all well worn territory, and the spelling bee is no newcomer to Hollywood either. This movie overcomes all of the obstacles put in front of it, to come out at the head of the genre. It’s a sports movie about rooting for the underdog, and it acknowledges that, but it is able to bypass what was mocked so well in “Dodgeball” and remain earnest and sincere. Dr. Larabee teaches Akeelah the power of words, not just the language of origin. He wants her to realize that success is not something that only suburban kids can strive for. Keke Palmer, as Akeelah, is astonishingly real and displays a wide emotional range in a movie that belongs to her. Laurence Fishburne and Angela Basset play off each other well, as they have done before, and lend a certain amount of credibility to a movie populated by a lot of kids who have never acted before, but who, nevertheless, shine.

Writer/director Doug Atchison deserves a lot of credit for traveling a well worn road but making new tracks. He refuses to beat anything into our heads, and is constantly pulling back from what so easily could have become melodrama. The movie is surprisingly subtle for the genre and it is an achievement in modern filmmaking. Sure, it isn’t perfect, and two montage sequences run a little close together, but it takes great skill to make this an enjoyable, engaging movie without resorting to sap.

Many movie-goers these days are overly sentimental or overly cynical and sometimes both, but the Children of the 80s love nostalgia – even if it’s for something that they didn’t experience as a child. This is a movie that harkens back to the pre-multiplex days, when most movies were family friendly in that they appealed to adults and children, not enjoyed by children and tolerated by adults. Hollywood needs to make more movies like “Akeelah and the Bee.” Even if it’s not you’re style, it’s miles ahead of slosh like “Are We There Yet?” and “The Pacifier.” It deserves your $6.50, whether you think so or not. It’s something that’s been done many times before, and when it’s done well we can see why.

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