Talk:Akeelah and the Bee

Untitled
Is "The Starbucks funding raises questions pertinent to today's cinema, such as whether or not the presence of corporate sponsorship decreases the value of the art. However, due to the costs associated with filmmaking, this is a trend that will likely continue, for better or for worse" really NPOV? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Trojan traveler (talk • contribs).

Starbucks signed on to the project after the film was shot and edited. They did not have any creative role in the making of this film.


 * Nothing in that paragraph is cited, so it's going...now.--Planetary 23:37, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

Name origin
is the name Akeelah invented or from some other culture?


 * According to this page, "Akilah" is an Arabic name meaning "intelligent, logical, one who reasons". --Mathew5000 10:23, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

I'm biased toward Latin, but I immediately thought of [Aquila], the constellation. It means EAGLE.

Spelling the name Akeela is probably more neutral, and could go either way. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.179.22.132 (talk) 07:09, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

Was it a boxoffice bomb?
seems like it disappeared in a week after all the months of starbuck hype. did it make any money?

The movie cost under 6 million and grossed around 19 before the release of the DVD... hardly a bomb

True story?
Nothing in the article says if it is or not, but it certainly sounds like the kind of movie that would be based off of nonfiction.--SeizureDog 21:07, 22 August 2006 (UTC)
 * The movie is fiction. Somebody just made it all up. --Mathew5000 22:16, 22 August 2006 (UTC)
 * It is a made up story that got support after Spell Bound came out. Timothy Clemans 17:50, 16 September 2006 (UTC)
 * The Scripps National Spelling Bee is factual. However, when Akeelah and Dylan are declared co-champions at the end, that clearly never happened. Mathnerd314 15:25, 25 November 2006 (UTC)


 * Actually, twice in spelling bee history, a co-champion has been declared.


 * Actually, three times: 1950, 1957, and 1962, according to the 2006 Paideia. However, the movie is clearly set later than 1990, since Akeelah has obtained a list of all the winning words up to then. Mathnerd314 01:55, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

Do you post on AoPS? Also, does anyone have information about the location filming of this movie, because I think it was shot on site in my elementary school (Woodland Hills Elementary)
 * Yes, I do, but that's off topic. Look on IMDB for the filming information.Mathnerd314 23:58, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

Plot section
I think the plot needs to be trimmed quite a bit. Legedevin 01:00, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

Akeelah and the Bee......Poem
The poem that was on the wall in professors office that Akeelah read....who wrote it? I cannot find it anywhere.

"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us.' We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be?" -Marianne Williamson (though sometimes falsely attributed to Nelson Mandela.

207.183.230.217 10:34, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

Warning: Extremely POV
This article seems heavily biased against the film, including an exorbitant amount of harsh criticism while having next to nothing in the way of positive reviews. One of the critical reviews even violates Godwin's Law and has no place in an objective encyclopedia!

I'm pretty sure this movie isn't that controversial; I have never met a single person who saw the film and didn't like it. The only people I've met who didn't like the film are Don Imus-esque racists who have never even seen it and have no plans to ever see it. And I've only met one or two of them in my life!

I admit I may be a bit biased in favor of the movie, but I want to counter any misinformation on Wikipedia, to prevent this movie from becoming the next John Seigenthaler Sr..

As this is one of my first edits, please forgive me if I "be bold" a little too much. If no one provides a valid explanation for why the criticism section (or parts of it) should be left intact, I'll probably delete the whole section in a few days.

Cheers,

--Stonemason89 22:26, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

I just took another look at the reviews and the problem seems even worse than I first thought it was. The reviewers have names like "Steve Rhodes" and "John Van Busack". Obviously, they are not Asian-American! If they were, then there would be at least some justification for keeping them in. But how is a guy named "John Van Busack" qualified to write authentically about Asian-American stereotypes?

Also, of all the African-American themed films out there that deal with racial isses, a huge majority of them have white villains. I'm white, but I'm okay with that; it's pretty much how history turned out. Nobody else gives a darn, either. So why all the uproar when there's an Asian character used as the antagonist?

He's not even a "villain" in the usual sense; his portrayal is actually considerably more sympathetic than the critics are claiming. At the end of the film, even his father is "won over" by Akeelah's grace and kindness. His father is hardly portrayed as a "Nazi" (I still can't believe those critics dropped the n-bomb!), any more than Akeelah's own mother is. She gets quite domineering at times, too, but she also softens up toward the end.

I know what I'm talking about, too. I go to a largely white, high school but at least 40% of my friends (could be more, even) are black, Hispanic, or Asian. It's always been that way; I'm something of a Maniac Magee by nature. So I have a good understanding about race relations here in America. And I highly doubt that even one of my Asian classmates would be offended by this film.

It seems like the highfalutin whites who write those kind of reviews are more offended by (real or imagined) stereotypes of minorities in the media than the minorities themselves are! Why do Asians need some white, liberal movie critic to tell them what they should and should not be offended by? They are smart enough to decide that themselves.

These ultra-politically-correct movie reviewers are probably more motivated by assuaging their own white guilt then by genuine racial sensitivity; they're insincere! That's what ticks me off about political correctness; I'm all for racial sensitivity, but we should listen to people who are actually qualified to talk about racial issues.

--Stonemason89 23:13, 17 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Rather than deleting the criticism section, maybe give a shorter and more nuanced view. Unless the criticism is completely unnotable. Nothing inherently wrong with having a minority play the anti-hero. kwami 17:23, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

(from above)"One of the critical reviews even violates Godwin's Law and has no place in an objective encyclopedia!"

No, it doesn't "violate" Godwin's law. The only way you could "violate" that law is to have an infinitely long forum thread that never did mention Nazis or fascism, contrary to Godwin's assertion that a forum thread is increasingly likely to mention it. People are always misstating Godwin's law and making false statements about its intent and its annoying. signed: unregged user —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.100.1.7 (talk) 22:09, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

OK, so what would the correct term be? Should I have said that it verifies Godwin's Law instead? Honestly, the things that make some people annoyed...sheesh.

Anyway, I just returned to this page after several months (sorry I haven't edited it in a while; I just "forgot" about it for a few months and decided to come back out to finish the job I started). It looks as if the most blatant "criticisms" have been deleted, which is good.

I did have to clarify something, though; the article said (matter-of-factly, not as part of a review quote) that Dylan's dad was given "the only overtly racist line in the whole movie". That is not true, there are at least three (two of which are spoken by Akeelah's own brother). These other examples include:

Terrence (Akeelah's brother): "I can't stand that Korean kid."

Terrence's friend: "He's Chinese."

Terrence: "Yeah, whatever."

Also, when Akeelah is given a particularly hard word (it's been a while since I last watched the movie; I can't remember which one it was exactly, Terrence says: "Now that's a white word if I ever saw one".

So I deleted the "only racist line" reference. If anyone disagrees with me, just feel free to speak up.

Other than that, it looks as if Kwami (or whoever it was) has done a pretty good job of cleaning up this article. I'm going to remove the POV tag, although I'll probably come back once in a while, just out of curiosity.

It's also worth noting that Akeelah and Dylan are tied at the end of the movie (sorry for the spoiler). I could understand why people would be upset if they had shown her "defeating" him mercilessly, but that's not what happened at all.

Cheers, and thanks for your patience,

Stonemason89 (talk) 02:57, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Inaccurate line
"The film also set off a brief national interest in spelling bees--the 2006 national bee was broadcast live on television". Actually, the 2004 bee was broadcast on ESPN and ESPN2, and footage from those broadcasts was used in the film. So the film didn't cause the bee to be broadcast on television; the broadcasts were already happening before the film came out. 173.165.239.237 (talk) 20:52, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

External links modified (January 2018)
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Minor stylistic quibble but...
I think the overuse of jargon like "well-off socioeconomic backgrounds" (intro) dilutes the power of language. "Come from wealth" is a common idiom that makes this point without using loftier-sounding jargon that doesn't actually communicate more information (conversely, saying something like "are children of the bourgeoisie" would be more precise, but it would be unnecessarily so in this context). — Preceding unsigned comment added by 172.220.5.228 (talk) 04:25, 20 March 2019 (UTC)