Sounds like your time could have been better spent watching Spellbound. A true story and an excellent documentary.

Or reading Word Freak about the world and characters of competitive Scrabble.

Spellbound is excellent. We have Word Freak, but I just wasn't able to get into it. I don't at all feel that the time spent watching Akeelah was wasted. It was a nice Yuppie fantasy.

The strange thing is that in Spellbound the white, Hispanic and Indian kids have the supportive family you'd hope for -- even if odd in their own ways -- while the black girl's mother is just the queen of entitlement. Is this a fictional rebuttal?

The mother in Akeelah certainly isn't entitled. Mostly, as written, she's just a plot point. Bassett plays her as a person.

Isn't it interesting how Hollywood got liberated from the Production Code and the studio system, is now run by the uber-hip, and yet is now producing movies so filled to the brim with clich�s that they make Andy Hardy movies look like underground films?

Well, I know what I was thinking while reading this, "Doug Atchison's black right? Oh please Lord don't tell me this patronizing liberal pabulum was written by a cracker", well I googled him, he's lily white.

I love it when Hollywood types make films that have Something To Say, because what they say, over and over, is 'Duuuuuh me stupid'.

We have a Doug Atchison in this country, he�s called Phillip Noyce, he made a dishonest film about imaginary mistreatment of Australia�s aborigines, as if there wasn�t enough real mistreatment to document. A leftist can never refrain from lying and propagandizing, even when the truth would serve them better. The picture on Independent Filmmaker magazine�s cover, of this big fat white man protectively encompassing two aboriginal waifs in ragged sackcloth (I�m not making this up), was the single most patronizing photograph ever taken by human hand. I tried googling it, but even the internet, which features women having sex with horses and lurid autopsy galleries, has some standards.

Why can't leftists give people credit for their own stupidity, laziness and venality, and admit that these qualities exist equally in every variety of skin color on earth but not equally in every culture? Is this really such a difficult thing to understand?

So true David, how well I remember the days of 1957 or 1958

Or for documentaries, how about The Way of the Puck? Actually, I'm not sure if that's actually possible yet--I think it's still looking for a distributor. However, it did just win the top award at Houston's Worldfest international film festival. [Disclaimer: the filmmaker is my cousin, but most assuredly did not learn any of his craft from me! :-) ]

Why it is that folks just don�t get this film? I�m against the white supremacist capitalist patriarchy as much as any; but can we acknowledge any subversive messages in this film, namely the one that says it takes a village, or the one that says all of us minorities don�t have to pommel one another to win the white game of manufactured scarcity?

Perhaps it�s actually being from South (Central) Los Angeles and recognizing how well this film captures the essence of the divide. In the richest state of California, where the rich aren�t taxed and revenue continues to flow into the prison industrial complex at a rate hundreds times more than the rate of incease in education, residents are being made to believe that there is no money for education (that line about not having enough money for tissue paper in the bathrooms brought back memories). So children are trained to believe that there is no room for Blacks (and Latinos) in higher education so they shouldn�t be educated.

Akeelah (and her peers) derailing academic pursuits�children who are allowed to live and learn in such subhuman conditions naturally internalize its hopelessness�in the film comes across as authentic. In reality, the carefully nurtured belief system posits that for every Black or Latino student admitted into the University of California system, a superior Asian American student has lost out. Actually, superior Asian American students lose out to admit white students; but the debate is never framed in that way. In any case, the drama between Dylan and Akeelah captured that real life political debate perfectly. And the final message: there is room for us all. For those looking for a different message in a PG movie made for children, I question your motives.

Oh it's PG and for kids? So I've been sneering at the philosophical equivalent of finding Nemo? Well that was a waste.

I REALLY LIKED THE MOVE BECAUSE I LIKE SPELLING

Carolyn: Then you would really like Spellbound.

Amos: I disagree that the movie is for kids.

Frank: Thanks for commenting. California spends about $7 billion annually on prisons and about $36 billion on K-12 education from the state's general fund. The lottery adds more money. Another $12 billion is spent out of the general fund for UC and CSU. Los Angeles spends better than $9,000 per student per year.

Nevertheless, we can all agree that the schools fail Akeelah or, more to the point, fail Georgia, who really needs a good basic education. (What do you make of Georgia deciding she'd rather be a pilot than a stewardess? A lot of the movie is about self-esteem (hammered into us when Akeelah says about Fishburne's character, "He lives around here? I thought he was important.") We're meant to think that Georgia, buoyed by Akeelah's accomplishment, now believes that she can be a pilot? But, can she? middle school is the same zoo it ever was.) The system won't be saved by spending money. The children will be saved by destroying the system and starting over.

I do see your point about Dylan and Akeelah and room for everyone. But, what if Dylan simply took Akeelah's gift? Why does everyone but Akeelah get to choose Akeelah's future? And, come on, her secret weapon is rhythm.

David Cohen: You spark good questions. Other than there being no real history of African American kid films, why shouldn�t this be called one?

> Los Angeles spends better than $9,000 per student per year.

But the state spends $49,000 per Youth Authority. I think the message is loud and clear.

> middle school is the same zoo it ever was.) The system won't be saved by spending money. The children will be saved by destroying the system and starting over.

Probably. But notice that this movie is not Dangerous Minds. It promotes the community, not na�ve patronizing white liberal teachers as our saviors. At the same time, reversing desegregation, which is what shutting our children out of the education game is doing with these disparities in education spending, is no answer either. Children most certainly will not be saved by the current lock-down message. That is, if California sought fit to build more than 1 new university rather than 23 new prisons in the last 25 years, perhaps the kids Akeelah represents wouldn�t think that they didn�t deserve to be smart.

>But, what if Dylan simply took Akeelah's gift?

He doesn�t. Why should we argue about a film that wasn�t made?

> Why does everyone but Akeelah get to choose Akeelah's future?

Perhaps because the filmmakers wanted to bring home the �it takes a village� message.

>And, come on, her secret weapon is rhythm.

The rhythm clich� did annoy me at first as well. But again, trying to put myself in this fictional character�s shoes, I realized it could also be another positive message. All children do not learn the same way. Some children are visual learners; they learn by seeing. Others are kinesthetic; they learn by doing. And still others are auditory learners. So again, where one can see a shameless stereotype, they can also see an ad for promoting alternative education. If jumping rope or speaking in time will get some of our kids to read and write, I have no objections.