I went to watch a movie today, alone. I do that sometimes, when I just want to enjoy my own company, or when I cannot persuade the other half to watch a chick flick. So I decided to go and watch " Spellbound" this morning.
The entire cinema consisted of 1 person, ME! It was quite cool, no annoying children asking
" what's happening ah?" , no mobile phones going off at the most crucial part of the movie and best of all, no horny couples making out in full view of everyone else.
The movie tracks the lives of these 8 children who are preparing for the National Spelling Bee. It's this huge competition that is even telecast live on ESPN. Since when did spelling become a sport, I have no idea. But the competition is so huge that even us folks living in TLOTW get to watch it on ESPN, a week after the live telecast that is.
Even if spelling isn't exactly a sport, you got to hand it to these kids. They spend up to 9 hours a day, learning words from the dictionary. One child had a tutor for German, French and Spanish as well as a spelling coach. Some of the parents get so caught up in it that their lives revolve around their "champion". The one thing these kids have in common is that none of them really have many friends. And you wonder why..... They have such extensive vocabularies that no average teenager would be able to understand them without a dictionary in one hand. A parent of one of the contestants said that the spelling bee is another form of child abuse. While I won't agree with her totally, I feel there is some truth in that statement. It's ok if the child chooses to do this for his/herself. But when it's the parents who force the kids to study 24/7, then I feel it's wrong. After all, these are KIDS and should be allowed to act like one.
It was a pretty good movie, go see it if you have a chance.
