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Bend It Like Beckham

These girls have big goals.

FILM FACTS

Starring: Parminder Nagra, Keira Knightley and Jonathan Rhys Meyers
Director: Gurinder Chadha
Rating: PG-13 for language and sexual situations
Genre: Comedy, Sports

Discuss this film | Official movie site

See showtimes (PG-13) 112 minutes

Grade: B+

Verdict: This sunny soccer movie is alive and kicky.

By ELEANOR RINGEL GILLESPIE
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Imagine if in "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" what Nia Vardalos wanted wasn't a cute WASP husband but to drive it like Tiger Woods or shoot it like Shaq. Eighteen-year-old Jess Bhamra (Parminder Nagra), the spunky heroine of the crowd-pleasing British import "Bend It Like Beckham," faces a similar tension between her rowdy yet loving ethnic family and her true love, soccer. Think, "My Big Fat Sikh Soccer Match."

A soccer-mad, high school senior who beats the boys in pickup games, Jess idolizes England's Manchester United superstar David Beckham (aka, Mr. Posh Spice). In fact, the spicy-sounding title has nothing to do with anything kinky; it refers to a particular soccer move Beckham has mastered.

None of this sits very well with Jess' very traditional Indian family. Her father (Bollywood star Anupam Kher) is still scarred by the prejudice he encountered as a promising cricket player. Her mother (Shaheen Khan) just wants Jess to go to college and get married, like her pampered older sister, Pinky (Archie Panjabi), who's about to tie the knot in full "Monsoon Wedding" fashion. Mom thinks it'll do Jess more good to learn how to cook aloo gobi than to run around a field in shorts with a bunch of girls.

Enter Jules (Keira Knightley from "The Phantom Menace"), a coltish blond beauty and fellow soccer fanatic who invites Jess to join her semi-pro team, the Hounslow Harriers. Ironically, Jules, who is an English rose, also faces disapproval on the homefront. Her mom (the delightful Juliet Stevenson) fears her daughter's soccer obsession means she's -- gasp -- lesbian. "There's a reason Sporty Spice is the only one without a feller," she cautions.

The plot is pure "Rocky Redux," but it's played out so exuberantly and with such a good heart, it hardly matters. Filmmaker Gurinder Chadha grew up in the same area of London where Jess' family lives. She understands how the collision between tradition and assimilation can yield some amusingly incongruous culture-clash images -- such as Jess' gaggle of female relatives with their saris and cellphones. Further, Chadha's obvious respect and affection for the Bhamras' old-world customs frees her to make fun of them, without coming off as mean-spirited or supercilious.

The appealing cast, which includes Jonathan Rhys Meyers ("Velvet Goldmine") as the Harriers' handsome Irish coach, smoothly finesses the film's innate predictability. The movie may be slight and its budget skimpy, but there's no sense of anyone giving a walk-through performance. It's as if the modest movie's success is a collective cause for everyone involved. As Spencer Tracy once said of Katharine Hepburn, there's not much meat there, but what's there is choice.