Movie Review

I saw the movie Akeelah and the Bee this weekend. This movie is supposed to be the ultimate feel good family movie. It is about a little black girl from the ghetto whose dream it is to win the national spelling bee. To achieve her dream she must overcome many evil forces that are out to stop her. Her coach, a former spelling bee champion from the ghetto himself is played by Laurence Fishburne (aka Cowboy Curtis), who also produced the movie. Akeelah's evil forces come in many forms and many are her own personal biases, like her unwillingness to ask for help from others. I thought that was a great message. However, another clear message was that if you are a white, upper-middle class, private-school-educated male, uh... just like me, then you have no business even seeing this movie. People like me are lined up like shooting gallery ducks throughout the movie so that Akeelah can destroy them in spelling bee competitions. For me, this was not the ultimate feel good movie. Rather, it made me want to volunteer my services to some charity like Homeboy Industries just to relieve some of this godawful guilt.