Akeelah Anderson (Keke Palmer of "Madea's Family Reunion") is an 11-year-old girl from South Los Angeles, who gets a lot of peer pressure from her classmates because she’s smart. Her widowed mother, Tanya (Angela Bassett), does the best she can, which she knows is not good enough. Tanya struggles with going to work and putting a family meal on the table for Akeelah, her brother who’s on the cusp between the right path or gang life (as in "ATL"), and a teenage sister who lives at the house with her young baby.

It’s great to see Fishburne and Bassett reunite in a film, without all the anguish from "What’s Love Got to Do With It." Akeelah and her new friend Javier (J.R. Villarreal of TV’s "Without a Trace") bring an undeniable charm to the film that speaks to diversity in America with a soft touch that "Crash" was never intended to have.

Six years ago writer-director Doug Atchison’s screenplay, "Akeelah and the Bee" won an intense competition among new screenwriters, which led to this film. With the recent documentary "Spellbound" in addition to Richard Gere’s "Bee Season" last year, one might wonder if a fresh story with charm and drama could be made so soon on the subject of spelling bees and not be in the "seen that" category.

What makes this spelling bee story different (not necessarily better) than the others, is it’s unique twist on America. While it’s a family film, the subplot is a quasi-documentary of the sorry state of affairs of schools in our large cities. We need a "V for Vendetta" mentality about the concept of "No Child Left Behind." No matter where you live, what happens next door or in the next city, or even another state, has a direct impact on the quality of life of all of us. It may not be true for everyone, but may be fact for those of us that don’t live in a gated community.