An eleven-year-old black girl (the appealing Keke Palmer) in the South L.A. ghetto braves the taunts of "freak" and "brainiac" to enter the Scripps National Spelling Bee and, on her first try, go clear through to the televised finals in Washington, D.C., where it all comes down to "logorrhea" and "pulchritude," two words to make even an average speller feel like a champ. In short, it's the documentary Spellbound with a fictional stacked deck, a palatable if not exactly swallowable family film, the sort of thing Oprah could get behind a hundred percent. Laurence Fishburne is the moody private tutor and Angela Bassett the distracted single mom: Ike and Tina Turner together again! Written and directed by Doug Atchison. (2006) — Duncan Shepherd