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He’s
a brainiac: finalist Ted Brigham in Spellbound.
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A
Way With Words
By Shawn Stone
Spellbound
Directed by Jeff Blitz
In watching a competition, ispectators
often take as much enjoyment in lambasting the loser as in
celebrating the winner. Someone would have to be truly heartless,
however, to root against any of the kids in Spellbound,
a documentary about the annual National Spelling Bee.
The National Spelling Bee?
Believe it or not, a group of kids under age 15 trying to
spell increasingly difficult words in a high-pressure elimination
competition makes for terrific cinema. While there is a kids-do-the-darndest-things
element—funny, outsized reactions and cute twitches—this pales
in comparison to the intelligence and grace the competitors
show.
First, however, the filmmakers profile eight young people
who have won regional competitions and are on their way to
Washington, D.C., for the national bee. These segments are
deft, giving the audience a solid impression of each kid and
their personal circumstances. The stories are compelling.
The children include April Degideo, a bar owner’s daughter
who spends her summer vacation studying words eight hours
a day; Angela Arenivar, whose illegal-immigrant farmworker
parents never learned to speak English; Ted Brigham, considered
a freak in rural Missouri because of his intelligence; Nupar
Lala, a soft-spoken but self-assured object of jealousy for
the boys in her class; Harry Altman, a funny kid who talks
incessantly; and Neil Kadakia, a bright child of upper-class
immigrants who spare no expense to make him a winner, including
paying 1,000 people back home in India to pray during the
national bee.
The filmmakers occasionally ape the smart-ass Michael Moore
style to highlight the way class and race affect both the
spellers and the competition. Some of this is purely funny.
The rancher who employs Angela’s father is revealed to be
a cartoon racist who proudly describes his longtime employee
as a “good” Mexican; polo- playing Emily Stagg talks about
leaving the au pair at home in Connecticut so that the trip
to the bee can be quality “family time.”
Mostly, though, the filmmakers let the images tell a more
serious story: While Neil practices for the bee on his computer,
Ashley White, a determined Washington, D.C. native who lives
in the projects, and Angela, the farmhand’s daughter, are
shown poring over dictionaries and using homemade study aids.
This adds an interesting extra layer of tension to the competition:
Will the working-class kids from public schools be able to
compete with kids who’ve had every possible advantage?
The final competition is intense and incredibly nerve-racking;
at the matinee screening I attended, the audience regularly
gasped and sighed as the kids spelled—or, heartbreakingly,
failed to spell—absurdly difficult words. It’s wonderful to
see the kids excel under pressure, though; the way Emily repeatedly
picked apart the foreign-language origins of words to figure
out the correct spellings made me feel particularly stupid.
It’s impossible not to root for particular spellers, though
this reviewer will admit no schadenfreude at seeing some of
the other kids lose. (They all worked too hard.) The real
success of Spellbound, however, is in the way it tells
the dramatic stories of eight interesting kids in a recognizable
version of the United States.
Stalled
at the Starting Line
2
Fast 2 Furious
Directed by John Singleton
Little-known Paul Walker had the good fortune to be cast in
the 2001 sleeper hit The Fast and the Furious, a high-octane
actioner set in the Los Angeles subculture of illegal drag
racing. Playing a rookie cop sent undercover to bust a ring
of car thieves, Walker had the even greater fortune of riding
Vin Diesel’s coattails: Diesel’s emotionally complicated drag-strip
champ turned out to be a starmaking role. Blonde and convincingly
unhip, Walker worked well as the outsider among the film’s
authentically etched ethnic characters. The icing on the asphalt
came from director Rob Cohen, who seemingly put the viewer
behind the dashboard of the film’s exciting race scenes. Boosted
by tanks of nitrous oxide and computerized consoles, the illicitly
customized cars zoom down the city streets like rockets on
wheels.
It might come as small surprise that the sequel, 2 Fast
2 Furious, lacks just about everything that made the original
such a blast, starting with Diesel, whose character vroomed
off into the sunset in the original, with the blessings of
Walker’s cop, Brian O’Conner. For 2 Fast, Brian is
reinstated as a policeman, in order to infiltrate the drag-race
circuit of Miami. Even though it’s directed by John Singleton
(Boyz N the Hood), this laughably lame attempt to cash
in on the first Fast’s edgy street cred could be more
accurately titled Hot Wheels Hot Pants. Most indicative
of the change in ’tude is the token woman racer, a high-heeled
hood ornament played by supermodel Devon Aoki. This wispy
character, who has little to do aside from high-fiving Brian,
is a deplorable substitute for Michelle Rodriguez’s girl-powered
mechanic.
At least Brian has a new bro, Roman Pearce (model-rapper Tyrese),
whose name is more imaginative than his personality: Roman
is a hotheaded ex-con who drives like the devil. Physically
magnetic, and sporting an admirably satirical chuckle, Tyrese
practically wipes the untalented Walker off the screen, despite
Singleton’s best efforts to turn Brian into one of the boyz.
As stiff as a prep-school uniform, Brian says “Let’s do this”
a lot (actually, so does everyone), yet he still comes off
as a phony.
But this is a phony movie from start to finish line, as the
cheesy racing sequences so disappointingly prove. The preposterous
plot—something to do with a sadistic crimelord who launders
money through his fleet of race cars—becomes quite unpleasant
after veering off on an idiotic tangent involving an overheated
rat and a fat detective on the take. One-liners referencing
Miami Vice and The Dukes of Hazzard are more
pathetic than amusing: The script is too closely a combo of
both for any self-parody. Even die-hard fans of the first
Fast may find the sequel about as enjoyable as 90 miles
of bad road.
—Ann
Morrow
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