Parker Lewis What a touching documentary! It was spellbinding! I saw this about a decade ago on DVD and it was interesting listening to the director's commentary about how he approached the suspenseful ending where he didn't want to focus on the winner alone. Instead he wanted to celebrate the achievements of all.I was shocked to hear about the untimely death of Ted Brigham, one of the contestants featured, in 2007 while doing pre-med studies. I'd like the director to do a remake of the documentary with the current crop of contestants. There's some chatter about the high proportion of Americans of Indian descent comprising the finalists, and for the sake of free speech the documentary can consider this angle, the elephant in the room. The director should consider whether spelling bee competitions are popular in India.

Martin Bradley This is a documentary about America's National Spelling Bee, focusing on eight children who make the finals and it's a lot more exciting than Hithcock's film of the same name. Like all good documentaries it's a triumph of research and of hundreds of hours of filming being whittled down to under two and like all good documentaries you feel a strong element of staging must be involved. (Our knowledge of the movies, by their very nature, predisposes us to presume that one of the eight chosen children has to the winner).While the children may be the ostensible 'stars' of the picture, (you may not find them all naturally likable but watching them getting knocked out of the competition can be nail-biting stuff), it's more often the parents you remember. Unlike the show-biz parents of the appalling stage-school kids we normally associate with these kinds of competitions, these people seem genuinely in awe of their children's talents and regardless of their backgrounds they all seem to have their feet firmly planted on the ground, and both children and parents are remarkably tantrum-free when they lose. Of course, there can only be one winner and by the time we get to the final two, the tension is considerable. That this isn't fiction and that we are dealing with real children makes it all the more exciting and all the more poignant. A likable experience.

James Weinberg (jasarthur) 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?

Dennis Littrell 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!)