Last year I saw Gracie, a movie about a teenage girl who wants to play high-school soccer in the late 1970s, when the game was considered a males-only sport in America, and faces a lot of opposition from her school. I finished my review with the line, "If it were football, would we be agreeing more with Gracie's opponents?" The Longshots gives us the opportunity to consider that question. Can we sympathize with, and cheer on, a girl who wants to succeed as a quarterback in an all-boys' football league? The answer is yes, because The Longshots focuses on characters and personal relationships and as a result, feels richer and more satisfying than the standard sports-genre film.

The story is simple and except for the girl-quarterback angle, old-fashioned in a Capra-esque way. Jasmine (Keke Palmer) is a middle-school loner and misfit in a small town hit by economic troubles. Her mom Claire (Tasha Smith) has to work longer hours at the diner -- dad ditched town and family several years ago -- and Jasmine is still too young to be left alone after school. So Claire pleads, nags and finally bribes her husband's brother Curtis (Ice Cube), an unemployed ex-football player, to keep an eye on his niece Jasmine. Of course they can't stand each other at first, but eventually Curtis discovers that Jasmine has an excellent throwing arm and teaches her how to be a quarterback. Meanwhile, the town's playground football team is languishing, and one thing they're missing is a decent quarterback, sooo ...

With Kit Kittredge: An American Girl finally opening in limited release on Wednesday, it seemed like a good time to take a look at other films girls in the same age demographic might also enjoy. As a mother of three daughters, I like to seek out films that have strong female characters. So many of the roles for females in Hollywood either fall into blatant stereotypes or position young girls and women as existing on this planet primarily for the pleasures of the male half of the species, and I don't want my girls growing up believing the images of women they're exposed to through the media. Of course, everything in life doesn't have to have a political agenda -- what fun would that be? So some of these are just films my own daughters very much enjoy, that the girl in your life might like also.

Here are seven great films for fans of American Girl books and movies ... let me know what others I've missed that you like; with only seven slots to work with, I had to leave out a lot of films I otherwise would have included ...

Do you remember the news that Fred Durst was working on his second directorial gig, a sports drama called Comeback? Well, for some reason, the film is now untitled (why change it to untitled when you at least have a working title!?), and it's got a cast to boot. But first, to refresh your memory: Ice Cube signed on to star in and produce the film, which is about a young, female quarterback named Jasmine Plummer who became the first girl to play in the Pop Warner football tournament. Cube had picked the role of Plummer's uncle and mentor.

Now Reuters reports that Keke Palmer has signed on to star as Jasmine. You might remember her from Tyler Perry's Madea's Family Reunion, or more likely, as the spelling fiend in Akeelah and the Bee. She's going to be joined by Tasha Smith (Why Did I Get Married?), Jill Marie Jones (Girlfriends), Matt Craven (Disturbia), and Garret Morris (The Jamie Foxx Show). Oh yeah, and Dash Mihok, who I left separate because, well, I have a soft spot for Benvolio, and I wanted to give him his own sentence.

Anyhow... There you have it. Comeback is still on its way, just as a different yet-to-be-released/decided name. In the meantime, I'm still waiting to see Durst's first -- The Education of Charlie Banks.

If only Akeelah and the Bee had existed when I was in the third grade. While most kids had their feel-good, underdog movies about basketball and little league, there wasn't much to encourage and inspire those of us who were physically inept and a little bit brainy (aside from some R-rated sex comedies celebrating super-nerds). The best thing about Akeelah is not that it merely empowers smart kids, though; it is that, unlike the majority of sports films, the film doesn't suggest that spelling has some kind of transcendental importance. It has its own equivalent of the big game, a national bee held in Washington, D.C., but the film is more concerned with the process of getting there, and it treats the finale like a pageant rather than a competition. While most underdogs seem to climax at the end of their films, the underdog of Akeelah and the Bee simply makes passage to the next part of her life.

Akeelah (superbly played by Keke Palmer) is an underdog both because, at 11-years-old she is on the younger side of spelling bee contestants, and also because she comes from a very poor district in South Los Angeles.  Although she is shy and often embarrassed about being the smartest kid in class, she is convinced by her principal, Mr. Welch (Curtis Armstrong) to participate in their school's first spelling bee. She wins the simple event and is offered coaching by Welch's friend Dr. Larabee (Laurence Fishburne), a strict older man who begins their first session together by denying Akeelah the use of "ghetto talk." He then proceeds to teach her linguistics and literature, subjects that Akeelah initially thinks are a waste of time when she should be studying actual, specific words. Like an academic version of The Karate Kid, the film treats Larabee as a literary Mr. Miyagi, building up the girl's strengths without her first realizing it.