More than just a bee movie: A charming girl casts her spell in an inspirational story

How do you spell irresistible?Another iridescent tile in the spelling-bee-as-metaphor-of-America mosaic, Akeelah and the Bee is an endearing, inspirational tale of an 11-year-old abecedarian from South Central Los Angeles who wins her middle-school contest and can't imagine that she'll advance to the regionals, let alone the nationals, of what might be called the Orthographic Olympics.

Imagine The Karate Kid hooking up with Boyz N the Hood and spawning Girlz and the Word.

As Akeelah Anderson, the underachiever fearful of being branded a brainiac by sister seventh graders, Keke Palmer soars, carrying writer-director Doug Atchison's film on new 'tween wings.

Even when the movie occasionally strains credulity and chronology, Palmer possesses that winning combination of shyness and spunk so particular to girls of her age that she keeps it rooted in the believable.

Akeelah has recently lost her father. Unbeknownst to her grieving mother (tigress-tense Angela Bassett), she finds a surrogate father and mentor in Dr. Larrabee (Laurence Fishburne, with an apt name for a spelling coach), a flinty UCLA professor and etymologist.

While gruffly chiseling Akeelah into his Eliza Doolittle, Dr. Larrabee finds his granite heart humanized by the youngster who soaks up learning like an infinitely absorbent sponge. It says something about Palmer's performance - and Fishburne's generosity - that the young actress eclipses the seasoned actor (one of the film's producers) in so many scenes.

Nicely shot by cinematographer M. David Mullen, who captures the glow of summery sunlight in every frame, the film never visualizes words, as that in-the-word-we-find-the-Word spiritual Bee Season so powerfully did last year.

For Atchison, who developed his film from his Nicoll Award-winning screenplay of 2000, the spelling bee isn't a religious but a social experience. He sees it as a proving ground for multicultural players whose mother and grandmother tongues make American English the diverse potluck it is.

When she advances to the citywide contest, Akeelah, who is African American and attends an underfunded public school, meets the Mexican American Javier and Asian American Dylan, students from a prosperous school district with enrichment courses.

Akeelah's age-appropriate flirtation with Javier (J.R. Villareal, a pint-size George Lopez) is one of the sunniest aspects of a film mostly about the bee's salutary effects. Atchison celebrates the spelling competition as a uniquely democratic institution that provides cross-cultural understanding, cements fractured communities, and, most of all, treats spectators to a high-stakes competition of rare sportsmanship and grace.

In its final act, Akeelah is as exciting as any Final Four matchup. What it may lack in cinematic art it compensates for in abecedarian adrenaline guaranteed to pump the pulse and the spirits of viewers from 10 to 90.

Contact movie critic Carrie Rickey at 215-854-5402 or crickey@phillynews.com. Read her recent work at http://go.philly.com/carrierickey.

Akeelah and the Bee *** (out of four stars)

Produced by Nancy Hult Ganis, Sid Ganis, Laurence Fishburne and Michael Romersa, written and directed by Doug Atchison, photography by M. David Mullen, music by Aaron Zigman, distributed by Lions Gate Films.

Running time: 1 hour, 47 mins.

Akeelah. . . Keke Palmer

Dr. Larrabee. . . Laurence Fishburne

Tanya Anderson . . . Angela Bassett

Javier. . . J.R. Villareal

Dylan. . . Sean Michael Afable

Parent's guide: PG

Playing at: area theaters