Spellbound Review
by Karina Montgomery (karina AT cinerina DOT com)June 10th, 2003
Spellbound
Matinee plus Snacks
I recently read the book Bee Season, and the notion of a real documentary about eight contestants in the 1999 Scripps Howard National Spelling Bee was too compelling to resist after reading that (unrelated) wonderful novel. I was very pleased by the film, to the point that I took practically no notes. All eight kids are stellar spellers, and come from wildly divergent backgrounds. Their families and schooling and towns, the amount of support or interest they have, tells volumes about the state of education in their various states, as well as how important parents are in that equation. Amusingly, the local Hooters, when sending well-wishes to a local finalist, misspelled "congratulations."
We have one Hispanic daughter of an immigrant rancher who speaks no English, she is a total product of her friends and schooling; a bespectacled white au-pair tutored multi-lingual intellectual princess; an Indian man pressuring his handsome, popular athlete son to excel beyond any acceptance of mediocrity; a bubbly, positive black girl who has no real coaching or support beyond her own studies; an awkward spaz of a misfit whose expressions give voice to what all his fellow contestants are feeling; a vaguely unsettling white loner boy whose analytical mind isolates him in his small town; an overly studious white girl whose humorously wacky parents indulge her obsession with spelling; and a confident young Indian girl with hugely supportive parents.
Getting to know the kids is interesting; however, as with many documentaries, what is shown rather than said is often the most interesting. We can see how their differing advantages and obstacles affect them when they finally walk up to the microphone. They speak of what spelling means to them, and we explore their intellectual virtuosity also through the prism of their parents. Those who are dinged out reveal much of their character with their post-Comfort Room statements as well. We also meet some of the other contestants, and learn even more about how terrifying the whole process can be. Nine million kids try to get as far as the final 250, and these eight are among them. My palms were sweating and I was stumped on as many words as kids dinged out in the first day of the competition.
In a movie about spelling, featuring young people talking about themselves, the risk for tedium is high. Not so here. First-time filmmaker Jeffrey Blitz and his shrewd editor Yana Gorskaya pace the movie perfectly. Tension is broken with interesting blurbs and interviews and images of the competition; the chase is cut to when needed and drawn out for our wriggling enjoyment when appropriate. It's a snappy piece of filmmaking about a rarely covered topic.
Of course you will want to pick your favorite child to win. Some of them you are relived to see go, others you wish had lasted longer. No matter who you pick, you feel the disappointment when the first of our eight are dinged out, and the final contestant in the documentary cast couldn't be sweating much more than we were in our seats.
--
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
These reviews (c) 2003 Karina Montgomery. Please feel free to forward but credit the reviewer in the text. Thanks. You can check out previous reviews at:
http://www.cinerina.com and http://ofcs.rottentomatoes.com - the Online Film Critics Society http://www.hsbr.net/reviews/karina/listing.hsbr - Hollywood Stock Exchange Brokerage Resource
Originally posted in the rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup. Copyright belongs to original author unless otherwise stated. We take no responsibilities nor do we endorse the contents of this review.
