The film starts with personal lives and motivations of eight spelling bee contestants in 1999 and culminates in a thrilling climax with the crowning of the champion. A lot of nail biting moments in the documentary are provided by the contest itself and cannot be attributed to any special efforts by the director. However, digging a little deeper, the documentary is exactly what it should be. It does not try to take any limelight away from the actual competition. Instead, through the stories of the hand-picked eight contestants, the film attempts to answer any and all questions that people are most likely to have while watching an arcane competition. Questions like- why do they do it? how do they feel? what motivates the parents?- may remain unanswered when the contest is televised. So, each significant moment in the bee is complemented with emotional interpretation of it through the eyes of the parents and participants. The documentary leaves you with a sense of satisfaction and wonderment. this is not only because the stories are exciting, but also because the director has laid out a minimalistic, yet adequate, framework to explore spelling bee and the people in it.

There was nothing spellbinding about this documentary. The obsessive and aggressively fanatical drive of these kids and their stage-parents to win or place made for a tedious yet tense watching experience. The worst aspect of this project--which earns it a negative star--was the monotonous Orff instrument soundtrack. Who wants to hear repetitive patterns of toy xylophones for 90 minutes? Someone was out of his mind when he scored this thing. My wife and I had to mute and fast-forward entire segments just to survive! I'm a professional musician, piano teacher and children's music specialist, so perhaps I was more attuned to the soundtrack than others, but it seems a total lack of creativity to think an entire movie should have Orff with harmonica in the background. It was as painful as Harry's facial contortions. Since when is Asperger's Syndrome comical?

Hitchcock did not direct this and it does not star Ingrid Bergman and Gregory Peck. Spellbound (1945) and Spellbound (2002) have in common the fact that they both won Academy Awards and both are spellbinding.Director Jeffrey Blitz's approach to making this most interesting documentary is straight-forward: pick eight contestants. Produce a mini-documentary on each one of them with scenes from family life, school. Interview their teachers, their parents, and some of their friends so that we get to know the contestants. Show the town they live in and the land they grew up on. Cut each mini-documentary to a few minutes and run them one after the other before taking us to the National Spelling Bee in Washington, D.C.Film the spelling bee and show the eight in action along with some of the other 242 or so who made it to the Capitol. Start with round one. Show the officials, the people who read the words to the contestants and answer questions about the words, such as word origin, definition, pronunciation, and root. Show the eager parents. Show the kids on stage with wrinkled brow and sweaty hands--well, you can't show the sweaty hands, although one mother reported that her hands got all wet when her daughter's turn came and then got all dry afterwards. Get some shots of the kids talking. Show the faces with the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat And guess what? The film plays itself. It's a natural. We identify with the contestants, perhaps have our favorite. The tension builds. The hour and a half flies by. The spelling bee is a great spectator sport! Another thing I liked about this was the fact that although the eager parents would put your usual stage moms or little league dads to shame in the way they pushed their kids, when it was over, it was over. A couple of the kids said they were disappointed not to have won, but what a relief it was not to have to study the dictionary anymore! Of course there is always next year, but unlike baseball and the Broadway stage, you can grow too old to compete in the spelling bee--although now that I think about it, I wouldn't be surprised to find that they have adult spelling bees, maybe even spelling bees for senior citizens.Another nice thing is the view Blitz gives us of the Heartland. The film amounts to a glimpse of America the melting pot near the beginning of the 21st Century (the contest is from 1999).Also educational were insights into the way the kids learned to be excellent spellers. They memorized, yes, but they also learned which letters were likely to be correct for certain sounds based on the language of origin of the word. Greek words--there a lot of scientific Greek words in the dictionary--almost always have every letter pronounced (although watch out for those silent leading "m's"!). French words are just the opposite. I used to teach honors English and I can tell you that half the kids could out-spell me. The best kid I had just seemed to do it naturally. I realized however after talking to him that his approach was phonetic to start. That was the default. Every word that could be spelled correctly phonetically he noted and put aside in his mind. (His habit was to notice the spelling of every new word he encountered.) If the word was not spelled phonetically, it was an exception and he noted why it was an exception and dreamed up some mnemonic--silent leading m!--device to remember the exception. I could never spell a word like "lieutenant" (French) until I also developed a mnemonic device. In this case I made a sentence out of the word: "Lie-u-tenant" or I found the little words within: "lie," ... "ten," "ant." Spellbound won the Oscar for Best Documentary in 2002, and it's that good. People and especially young people can identify (or not!) with kids their own age, and they can choose their favorites to root for.(Note: Over 500 of my movie reviews are now available in my book "Cut to the Chaise Lounge or I Can't Believe I Swallowed the Remote!" Get it at Amazon!)

No its not the Hitchcock film, its an interesting documentary film about the pressures, kids, preparation and events of a national spelling bee in America. Basically it shows the stories of six kids: Angela Arenivar, Ted Brigham, April DeGideo, Neil Kadakia, Nupur Lala, Emily Stagg, Ashley White and the hyperactive Harry Altman, who is pulling the face on the poster. It shows why they study, why they like to spell and their journey to the stage to win the spelling trophy. Their family, teachers and friends are obviously behind all of them determined that they could win. Obviously one of the nicest female kids won the trophy. It was nominated the Oscar for Best Documentary, Features. It was number 32 on The 50 Greatest Documentaries. Very good!