AKEELAH AND THE BEE — *** — Keke Palmer, Angela Bassett, Laurence Fishburne; rated PG (profanity, vulgarity, racial epithets).

"Akeelah and the Bee" is a low-key delight. D-E-L-I-G-H-T. Delight.

It's the first movie in some time actually lives up to its family-friendly billing. This drama doesn't rely on lowbrow humor and, for the most part, eschews gooey sentimentality.

Better yet, it has something to say about reaping the benefits of an education. That alone is enough to distinguish it from much the competition.

The film also boasts a charming lead performance by relative newcomer Keke Palmer, who plays Akeelah Anderson, an 11-year-old South Los Angeles student who has a talent for spelling.

Unfortunately, she's afraid to stand out and be a "brainiac." But her principal (Curtis Armstrong) pushes her to enter the school's spelling bee, which she wins rather easily, and which moves her up to the regional bee, where she'll be squaring off against more-experienced, better-trained competition.

Luckily, she's being coached by a former university professor named Joshua Larabee (Laurence Fishburne), who has also become sort of a father figure to Akeelah. Her widowed mother, Tanya (Angela Bassett), however, is not too thrilled to see her daughter neglecting her other classwork in favor of spelling studies.

At nearly two hours, the film is a little long, and some of the subplots don't really go anywhere. The exception is the friendship that develops between Akeelah and Javier (J.R. Villarreal), another spelling-bee contestant.

Screenwriter/director David Atchison may not have the most impressive credits (he was responsible for a 1999 film titled "The Pornographer"). But here he smartly balances humor and drama, and he's also assembled a first-rate cast.

Palmer is the obvious standout, but it's also nice to see Fishburne and Bassett reunited for the first time since 1993's "What's Love Got to Do With It."

"Akeelah and the Bee" is rated PG for scattered use of profanity, as well as a couple of crude slang terms and racial epithets. Running time: 112 minutes.

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E-mail: jeff@desnews.com