Welcome to" Saturday Night at the Movies."

I'm your host, Glenn Holland.

Tonight's film is "Akeelah and the Bee" written and directed by Doug Atchison and released in 2006.

It stars Keke Palmer, Laurence Fishburne, Angela Bassett and Curtis Armstrong.

The Bee of the title doesn't refer to a honey producing insect, but to a gathering of people for a specific purpose, like a quilting bee.

The specific gathering referred to in "Akeelah and the Bee" is the Scripp's National Spelling Bee.

Akeelah Anderson is an 11 year old African American girl living with her mother, two older brothers and an older sister in south Los Angeles.

She's bright and has a particular fascination with words but she doesn't like school and often skips her classes at Crenshaw Middle School.

One of her teachers notices her spelling skills and the principal of the school, Mr. Welch urges her to participate in a school wide spelling bee in lieu of detention for her frequent absences.

Akeelah wins the bee, but afterwards she is challenged by Dr. Larabee, a friend of Mr. Welch, to spell a series of difficult words.

He offers to coach her but they have a falling out at their first meeting and Akeelah has to prepare for a district wide spelling bee on her own.

At the bee, she encounters two other contestants, Javier, who befriends her, and Dylan, a fierce competitor who has placed second at the national spelling bee twice.

Akeelah barely manages to do well enough at the district level to move on to the regional bee when another student is disqualified.

Javier invites her to join the spelling club at his school in Woodland Hills, a suburb several bus rides from her home.

There, she runs into Dylan, who dismisses her spelling skills and tells her she needs a coach.

When Akeelah is late getting home, her mother, Tanya, who is already worried about her brother running with a bad crowd, scolds Akeelah and tells her to forget about spelling and concentrate on her schoolwork.

But Akeelah is determined to continue, if she can convince Dr. Laraby to be her coach and find a way to clear the hurdles between her and a place at the National Spelling Bee in Washington DC.

Spelling bees are almost exclusively restricted to countries where English serves as the primary language.

Since English includes words from so many different root languages that spelling any given word correctly is often difficult for even well educated citizens.

Spelling matches and spelling bees apparently arose in the early 19th century as a way of teaching children standard American English spelling using Noah Webster's "Blue Back Speller", first published in 1786.

The spelling contest took place in individual schools or cities.

The first national spelling bee took place during the National Education Association's Convention in Cleveland, Ohio in 1908.

The first national champion was an African American girl, Marie Bolden.

The National Spelling Bee was organized in 1925 by the "Louisville Kentucky Courier Journal" and has taken place annually except for three years during the Second World War and in 2020 because of the Covid 19 pandemic.

The EW Scripps Broadcasting Company acquired the rights to the bee in 1941 and it is now officially known as the Scripps National Spelling Bee.

The competition is open to students under 15 who have not yet completed eighth grade.

Participants in the national contest are all winners of regional spelling bees in the United States including territories, overseas military bases and the Navajo Nation.

Participants may also come from other English speaking nations such as Canada, New Zealand, Ghana, Jamaica, and The Bahamas.

The first place prize for the first national spelling bee in 1925 was $500 in gold coins, raised to $1,000 the following year.

The amount of money and other prizes has gone up and down over the years and now stands at $50,000.

By comparison, the original 1925 prize of $500 would only be worth about $8,215 today.

But of course, then as now, the real prize is the honor of winning.

Director and screenwriter Doug Atchison first got the idea that eventually became "Akeelah and the Bee" while watching the Scripps National Spelling Bee in 1994.

He noticed that most of the contestants came from privileged backgrounds and wondered what it would be like for someone from a low income family with few resources to attempt to compete at the national level.

He knew that the setting of the National Spelling Bee would provide opportunities for drama, tension and moments of triumph and envisioned a sports movie along the lines of Sylvester Stallone's original "Rocky" in 1976.

He wanted his film to be inspirational in that same way, showing someone overcoming obstacles with the love and support of the people around them and doing something they have both the talent and determination to achieve.

Atchison was also setting himself a difficult task since he was a white man writing a story about an 11 year old African American girl living in South Los Angeles.

But he was conscious of the potential problems.

He wanted to portray his characters in a way that was authentic and avoided stereotypes while also acknowledging some of the problems a girl like Akeelah would face in her single minded dedication to winning the spelling bee.

He also was concerned to show the strength of the community around her despite underfunded schools and over policed neighborhoods.

Both Laurence Fishburne and Angela Bassett loved the script when they read it and Fishburne accepted the part of Dr Larabee for less than his usual salary while also serving as one of the film's producers.

Keke Palmer was one of 300 girls who auditioned for the part of Akeelah in Los Angeles, New York and Atlanta.

She had already appeared in movies and on television and Atchison felt she had the deep understanding of the character necessary to make, as he put it, the right emotional choices.

Anne Hornaday wrote in "The Washington Post" Palmer's Akeelah is that cinematic rara avis, the kid who is cute without being too cute, sympathetic without being coiling and believable without being tiresome.

Reviews of the film were generally positive.

Although some critics thought its adherence to the standard plot points of a sports movie made it rather predictable even as it managed to be inspirational at the same time, "Akeelah and the Bee" was nominated for a number of awards given by African American film groups.

Keke Palmer won Best Actress from the Black Reel Awards, the Black Movie Awards and the NAACP Image Awards, which also gave Doug Atchison an award for his screenplay.

But there were also those who felt the movie incorporated persistent narrative themes that denigrate African Americans and their communities.

Specifically, they criticized the idea that Akeelah needed to be rescued in some way from her situation as an African American teenager and that her salvation was in accordance with specifically white ideals of achievement, represented by the National Spelling Bee.

There were also accusations that the portrayal of Akeelah's spelling rival Dylan Chiu incorporated several negative stereotypes about Asian Americans.

Dylan is portrayed as a classic Asian overachiever and his father is a stern disciplinarian unyielding in his determination that his son must win.

A critic wrote in the "San Jose Metro", "Stepping around Black stereotypes, the film squishes its two left feet right in the mire of Asian stereotyping.

The climax of the spelling contest, and of "Akeelah and the Bee" itself, is the tie between Akeelah and Dylan that makes them co-champions.

The National Spelling Bee had its first pair of co champions in 1950 when the competition ran out of words.

Others followed in 1957 and 1962, when both finalists failed to spell the same word correctly.

There were ties between two competitors three times in succession in 2014, 2015 and 2016.

And in 2019, when all the remaining competitors completed five consecutive perfect final rounds, the organizers declared an eight way tie.

After that, I hope they all got to sit down for a spell.

Please join us again next time for another "Saturday Night at the Movies".

I'm Glenn Holland.

Goodnight.