"Akeelah Anderson" adalah sebuah film yang sangat memotivasi, film ini saya tonton pada saat kegiatan "FEE Center" kemarin.
Ini sinopsisnya ..
Selamat membaca !
Akeelah
Anderson (Keke
Palmer) attends
Crenshaw Middle School, a predominantly black school in South Los Angeles. Akeelah is a bright 11-year-old
and never makes errors on her spelling tests and doesn't really seem to fit in.
She lives with her widowed mother, Tanya (Angela Bassett), her three siblings Kiana, Devon,
and Terrence (Erica
Hubbard, Lee
Thompson Young, and Julito McCullum), and her infant niece. Her principal
, Mr. Welch and her teacher, Mrs. Cross, recommend her to sign up for the
Crenshaw Schoolwide Spelling Bee, which she wins easily by spelling
"fanciful". After that, Dr. Joshua Larabee (Laurence
Fishburne), a
visiting English professor and Mr. Welch's college friend, tests her with some
difficult words and finds that she has the potential to reach the National
Spelling Bee, even though she misspells "pulchritude".
When Akeelah
asks Dr. Larabee to coach her, he rejects her for being rude. Instead, she
studies on her own for the district spelling bee. During the bee, her sister
Kiana catches one of the other contestants cheating, disqualifying him. This
saves Akeelah to take the tenth and final qualifying spot for the
regional/state bee by spelling "pastiche", although she spelled a word
wrong. She also meets and befriends Javier Mendez (J.R. Villarreal), a
12-year-old Mexican-American boy and fellow speller who has a crush on her.
Their friendship started when he helped Akeelah pin her number on her shirt,
saying that he won't "impale her". Javier invites her to join the
spelling club at his Woodland Hills middle school.
In Woodland
Hills, Akeelah meets Dylan Chu (Sean Michael Afable), a Chinese American boy who had won second place at the
past two national spelling bees. He is contemptuous of her — as well as the
other members of the spelling club — and asks her to spell "xanthosis"*. When she starts with a
"z", he tells her she needs a coach.
At the
conclusion of the spelling club meeting, Javier invites Akeelah to his birthday
party, where she has her first kiss with him; Javier plays it off by saying he
only kissed her out of impulse, and jokingly asks if she plans to sue him for sexual harassment. Dylan plays Scrabble with Akeelah and several other
guests. Akeelah almost defeats Dylan, but loses by just two points. She later
overhears Dylan's father (Tzi
Ma)
reprimanding him for nearly losing to "a little black girl" and
insisting he must win first place.
Tanya, still
depressed at her husband's death and concerned for her daughter's grades and
frequent truancy, forbids Akeelah from participating
in the state bee. Akeelah responds by forging her father's signature on the
consent form. She memorizes all the winning words from past spelling bees and
works with Dr. Larabee, learning not only words but life lessons as well.
During the
state bee, Tanya interrupts and forces Akeelah off the stage at possible cost
of disqualification if she does not return for her next word. After an intense
discussion with Dr. Larabee and Mr. Welch, Tanya relents, asking Akeelah how
she thinks she should be punished. Akeelah suggests not being allowed to
continue in the bee, which her mother says would not be a punishment to
Akeelah, but to the two men who worked hard to sponsor her. Akeelah then
suggests double her amount of chores for a month, which her mother accepts, but
instead makes three months. In the meantime, Javier has fought an
inspired delaying action to prevent Akeelah's disqualification; he walks very
slowly to the microphone, and asks for his word, "ratatouille", to be repeated five times,
defined and used in a sentence several times; he even asks for it to be used in
a song. Dylan finishes first, Javier second, and Akeelah third; they all
advance to the Scripps National Spelling Bee.
As Christmas
approaches, Akeelah goes out to buy Dr. Larabee a present, not knowing that he
plans to give up coaching her because she reminds him too much of his deceased
daughter Denise (to the point he actually calls her by that name). Instead, he
gives Akeelah 5,000 flashcards to study. Without her coach, Akeelah loses her
motivation. She is rejected by her best friend, Georgia, and feels the pressure
from her neighborhood to do them proud. But after her mom tells her that if she
looked around her, she had "50,000 coaches", Akeelah recruits
neighborhood coaches, including her family members, classmates, teacher,
friends, and her neighbor Derrick T (Eddie Steeples), and prepares in earnest.
After reuniting
with Dr. Larabee, Akeelah goes to Washington, D.C. with her mother, oldest brother,
best friend, principal, and Dr. Larabee, unaware that her coach has paid for
four of their tickets. On the plane, Akeelah sits next to Javier, who has an
aversion to heights, and kisses him on the cheek. Akeelah and Georgia rekindle
their friendship after she invites Georgia to accompany her to Washington D.C.At the competition, her performance
is solid and steady, much of it thanks to her "jump rope" strategy
from Dr. Larabee. With only a few stumbles, she is smiled on as a crowd
favorite. Javier and Dylan also compete; Javier is eliminated on "Merovingian" which he spells Marovingian,
finishing 5th, and begins rooting for Akeelah. The other finalists, Mary
Calveretti and Rajeeve Subramonian misspell "mithridatism" and "vitrophyre," respectively. Finally, it is
down to Dylan and Akeelah, and the two finalists are allowed a brief break
before continuing with the 25 championship words. During the break, Akeelah
overhears Dylan's father warning him that if he gets second place this year,
his last chance at becoming middle-school champion, he will be second place for
life.
Akeelah
attempts to throw
the competition by
deliberately misspelling "xanthosis" by spelling it with a
"z" instead of an "x." Dylan, knowing that Akeelah
deliberately misspelled the word, intentionally misspells it as well by
spelling it with "ses" instead of "sis." While the judging
board discusses this unlikely occurrence, Dylan tells Akeelah that he only
wants to win fair and square, scoffing his father's do-or-die attitude. They
both go word for word up to number 24. Dylan correctly spells "logorrhea", earning him at least a share
of first place, and Akeelah spells "pulchritude" correctly to become
co-champion. As she does so, Akeelah has a vision of relatives, neighbors, and
Mr. Welch each contributing one letter to the word. Her victory raises cheers
from Washington, D.C. to California with Akeelah and Dylan holding the trophy
together.
^stay and enjoy with my blog^
