Posts Tagged ‘Keke Palmer’

THE LONGSHOTS: 2 ½ STARS

Blame Rocky for the state of sports movies. The come-from-behind-to-win-or-almost-win the big game was used very effectively in the first (and most recent) Rocky movies but unfortunately filmmakers have been using that set-up as a plot template ever since. That’s more than thirty years of inspirational coaches and underdog players. The sports and that faces change, it’s just the story that remains the essentially same. The Longshots is the latest movie to recycle the tired formula to tell the real-life story of the first girl to compete in the Pop Warner football tournament.

Ice Cube is Curtis Plummer, a former high school football star whose dreams of a professional career were cut short by injury. On a downward spiral since his accident, he rediscovers a sense of purpose by molding his socially awkward niece (Akeelah and the Bee’s Keke Palmer) into the star quarterback for the local team, the Minden Browns. When she leads the team to the Pop Warner Super Bowl she not only gives Curtis a new lease on life, but inspires her entire hometown.

The most amazing thing about The Longshots isn’t the story—we’ve seen and heard it all before—nor is it the performances—Ice Cube is fine and Palmer is engagingly natural; no, the most striking thing about the movie is its director. If the name Fred Durst sounds familiar it’s because maybe you spent some time slam dancing to his nu metal band Limp Bizkit’s hit Re-arranged or maybe you downloaded his notorious sex tape off the net. The rock star and bon vivant of the 90s has matured into family friendly filmmaker in the new millennium.

The man who once choked out lyrics ripe with scatological references and used the Anglo-Saxon word for sexual intercourse 48 times in one three minute and fifty second tune has mellowed into the kind of director that has his characters say things like “If we got heart we got everything we need!” He shows an unexpected light touch, but by the time we get to the inevitable “What are you running from,” speech the build-up of clichés threatens to squash any goodwill the movie garnered in its better moments.

The Longshots isn’t a horrible movie, it’s just really average. Durst does his job adequately, giving the whole thing a kind of music video slickness, but despite Palmer’s efforts and Ice Cube’s likeability the whole thing feels like something we’ve seen before, and is quite forgettable. 

AKEELAH AND THE BEE: 3 ½ STARS

Akeelah and the Bee plays like Rocky crossed with Good Will Hunting. The latest in a string of spelling bee movies—is there a stranger genre—and coming hot on the heels of the hit documentary Spellbound and the drama Bee Season, Akeelah and the Bee is a story designed to make you cheer for the underdog.

Akeelah is a shy young girl from South Central Los Angeles who has a gift for spelling. It seems her late father had instilled in her a love of language and word games—don’t bet against her in a Scrabble match—but she tries to keep her etymologic endowment a secret in school, explaining that if she appears to be too smart the only word she’ll have to know how to spell is n-e-r-d. With some encouragement from her principal—the guy who played Booger in the Revenge of the Nerds movies—she enters the school’s spelling bee. After an easy win at her school she takes on a tutor—the brusque Lawrence Fishburne—a former champ who trains her for the national bee.

Akeelah and the Bee is a sentimental story that occasionally feels over calculated, as though writer / director Doug Atchison is trying to cram every after school special cliché into one story—we have the virtues of hard work, good sportsmanship, following one’s dreams and of course the ever popular love conquers all, to name just a few. The story is emotionally uncomplicated, some of the characters come directly from central casting, and it doesn’t have the clout of Spellbound but there are a couple of elements that elevate this movie, making it worthy of a big screen treatment.

Clichés aside the movie does have good messages for young people. Akeelah starts her journey as a shy young girl and gradually gains confidence in her abilities and learns to trust not only herself, but also those around her. Her character teaches kids that they can opt for any path in life, and work towards any destination they choose.

The movie’s secret weapon is Keke Palmer as the wonderful wordsmith. Palmer is a natural talent who brings new life to a character that we’ve seen on-screen many times. Her performance is so guileless that it really feels like you are watching a real kid working through Akeelah’s issues. Her authentic sensitivity blunts some of the more obvious emotional manipulations and earns the film a recommendation.