First of all: I absolutely *love* the National Spelling Bee. "Akeelah and the Bee" is out of theaters now, but available in DVD. Akeelah Anderson (Keke Palmer) is an underachieving middle-school girl from a Los Angeles ghetto. Despite her D grades, her teachers realize she's much smarter - she never misspells a word. Her spelling ability comes from the Scrabble games she played with her recently-dead father (and continues to play on her computer). One day she's forced into a school spelling bee as an alternative to detention, and wins. Her school's principal then introduces her to Dr. Larabee (Laurence Fishburne), an on-sabbatical college professor who grew up in the same neighborhood and participated (with little success) in the National Spelling Bee at Akeelah's age. He's going to coach her through the regional bee, and (he fully intends) into the National Spelling Bee. Akeelah is torn between her "cool" friends who want her to give up on the bee, the stern Dr. Larabee who demands she stop her "ghetto-talk" while studying words, her stressed-out widowed mother who would rather Akeelah devote her time to regular schoolwork ... ... and her own ambition: to win the National Spelling Bee. OK, it's got every sports-movie cliché in the book, and then some (yes, I know, spelling bee isn't a sport). Or you can think of it as tried-and-true plot elements. The ending ... well, I don't want to give it away, but it's a very Objectivist ending. A sacrificial offer is made, and firmly declined - to the benefit of all concerned.