BEND IT LIKE BECKHAM
Starring:
Parminder Nagra, Keira Knightley, Archie Panjabi and Jonathan Rhys Meyers
Director: Gurinder Chadha
Running Time: 101 mins
Certificate: 12
Out to buy on DVD 18th November
Jess (Nagra) is a supremely talented young Indian girl. The problem is that her talent is not one that her family or her culture approves of. You see Jess is a gifted footballer, with more love for David Beckham than any of her family's traditional Indian values. This all changes when she meets Jules (Knightley) while playing a game with her mates in the park. Seeing she has talent, Jules asks her to come down to a pre-season training session at the Hounslow Harriers, a team in the woman's football league. The problem is that even though this is Jess's dream, she will have to keep it from her family and also continue her duties for her sister Pinky's (Panjabi) wedding.
This is a light-hearted comedy that tries a little too hard for it's own good.
The performances of the cast, especially the two leads, the very attractive Parminder Nagra and Keira Knightley, are both very good but an overly cheesy script that ties all the problems up too nicely limits them. It doesn't have the mix of social drama, comedy and cultural differences that "East is East" had, but I don't think the filmmakers were going for that strong a content.
The major problem I had was with the football matches themselves. The way they where shot by director Gurinder Chadha made it look like the girls couldn't actually play the game. The camera angles where too tight on the players meaning you didn't really get to see them pass the ball about. They would have been better shooting it like an actual televised football game and then you could have seen the player's actually play, instead of making you think that the filmmakers are just covering up their inadequate skills.
This aside, the film is still an above average feel-good movie and is worth going to see for Juliet Stevenson's performance as Jules' mother, who can't come to terms with her daughter's tomboy persona, which leads to some very comic moments. By setting its stall out to mix together cultural differences, female equality and comedy, at the end of the day it succeeds more than it fails.
Audio commentary with the director and co-writer, Behind the scenes featurette including premiere footage and outtakes, Gurinder's indian kitchen, Deleted scenes, Animated intros and menus
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The Usher 2002
