Akeelah and the Bee

Ah yes, back to the movies I own. It's worth noting that it's Feb. and I am 2 movies in. I am already planning on doing a lot of film watching once school is done and there are no more new episodes of Lost, The Office or 30 Rock.
This one belongs to the wife but is by no means one that I dislike. It may actually be my favorite of the ones that belong to her.
The film itself falls right in line with such films as Rudy, Miracle, Hoosiers and Rocky. Like these films before it, Akeelah and the Bee succeeds because it is not about the event itself that the characters are striving toward but the human spirit that brings them there. And like the sports films I mentioned, Akeelah and the Bee succeeds because we want to see Akeelah to succeed.
Akeelah is a 12 year old girl growing up in the Los Angeles ghetto. When we first see her she is in school and is doing her best to "fit in." It's an interesting paradigm as even her teacher aids in her attempts to "fit in" by returning her perfect score on a spelling test to her face down. But the school's principal as a goal of bringing respect and positive attention to his beleaguered school by involving Akeelah and her perfect spelling skills in the national spelling bee.
What follows is relatively predictable. Akeelah experience's various highs and lows on her journey and we empathize with her throughout even when we know that she will eventually achieve her goal.
The success of a film like this is not dependent on the highs and lows a character experiences but instead on how much we believe the characters. In Akeelah we see a very poignant connection that Akeelah has with her deceased father in which her spelling skills represent a connection she feels with her father. Beyond Akeelah, we see a cavalcade of characters who could have merely been representations of some stereotype but instead they come acrossed as very real and genuine in their actions and their reception to Akeelah and her gift. In particular I admire that the film doesn't go for any easy jokes relating to spelling bee kids being "weird."
The supporting performances are all effective. Laurence Fishburne does come across as Morpheus the college professor but that isn't a bad thing. Angela Bassett represents a single mom who is overwhelmed and just trying to do her best and the supporting kids all rise above the idea of being mere caricatures. When it comes to films I enjoy, I find the ones that respect their characters enough to allow them to rise above the limits of mere caricatures are the ones I enjoy the most. Akeelah and the Bee does this as well as any film I intend to write about.