Review of Bee Season (2005) by Francisco D — 28 Nov 2007

I just watched this movie on TV and it pissed the HELL out of me. First of all, I was doing 10 other things as I watched it and yet I still somehow managed to be bored by it. Let me preface this by saying that I love spelling bees and movies about them. This is the first problem. The concept that "origami" would be the final world in a national spelling bee is laughable. For that matter, every word Richard Gere gave that little girl to practice was no where near the level of the words given at national or even state spelling bees (piazza, fulcrum...give me a fucking break - if these were the only words she was practicing she would have been out in the first round).

The mother's mental illness story was ridiculous (all I could surmise was that she liked to collect glassy, shiny reflective things - and by collect I mean steal - and stick them in a storage unit and sit there in some misguided effort to "capture light") and the son's foray into whatever religious crap that was was underdeveloped and obnoxious anyway.

Lastly, don't get me started on the ending. I don't know if that was supposed to have some kind of bull shit religious significance or was some misguided effort to fix her family, but it made no sense. NONE.