(out of four)
By David N. Butterworth
I’ll be the first to admit I didn’t give Bend It Like Beckham much
of a chance going in. I’d seen the preview several times and, even though the
film has garnered raves at Sundance and in England (where just about every film
about a likable individual defying the odds/breaking the mould ala Billy
Elliot is heralded The Feel Good Movie of the Year), it looked slight,
corny, and hopelessly predictable.
Bend It Like Beckham is, sad to say, all of these things and more but
before I worry its weaker points let me mention a couple of its strengths.
Parminder K. Nagra, in the lead role of Jesminder “Jess” Bhamra, the
rebellious daughter of a very strict family of Indian immigrants living in
Hounslow, West London, is most appealing. In fact, with one or two exceptions
all of the actors are delightfully credible. And the traditional Sikh lifestyle–even
the one played out here under Heathrow’s busy flight path–is richly crafted
and elegantly detailed. Ah but the performers get saddled with some incredibly
lame material as the film tries too hard to be uplifting.
Story-wise here’s the drill: 18-year-old Jess loves to play football
(soccer to we heathens). Just for fun, in the park, with the lads. She’s good,
very good, and definitely better than the lads. But even though her bedroom wall
is adorned with posters of her idol, Manchester United star and England captain
David Beckham (aka Mr. Posh Spice), whose specialty is to bend a 25-yard free
kick around a human wall into the top corner of the net (hence the film’s
title), Jess’s parents do not want her to play football. Her mother wants her
to cook Indian delicacies like Aloo Gobi, marry a nice Indian boy as her sister
Pinky is doing, and settle down. Her father agrees with her mother.
But then Juliette “Jules” Paxton (Keira Knightley), a spunky tomboy who
plays for the Hounslow Harriers, a local girls football team, spots Jess’s
skills in the park one day and suggests Jess try out for the team. Now Jess has
to juggle more than just the ball if she’s going to get a crack at pursuing
her England dream.
There isn’t a professional women’s football league
in the UK of course, but there is a professional women’s soccer league in the
USA, and Joe (Jonathan Rhys-Meyers), the Harriers’ soft-eyed, tough-as-nails
Irish coach promises his girls there’ll be an American scout checking them out
at a critical playoff game in Germany.
Along the way, Bend It Like Beckham (directed and co-written, with
Paul Mayeda Berges and Guljit Bindra, by Gurinder Chadha) serves up cliché
after veritable cliché of predictable situations. Everyone in the film is
extremely likable though, and it’s hard to trash a film that has its heart in
the right place, but the humor is forced and obvious and there are very few
surprises to be had. Even the soccer scenes themselves are not terribly
thrilling. The practices and the games are slickly edited, as the girls first
work out, then step it up for the big game, but it looks more like a Nike
commercial–couldn’t we have seen more of the real actors scoring goals?
There’s a romantic “subplot” that’s thin and cloying with
embarrassing references to gays/lesbians and all the while Mrs. Bhamra (Shaheen
Khan) throws up her hands in despair wondering how her daughter could bring such
disgrace on her family. Bend It Like Beckham is hardly disgraceful, but
it left this hardened British football fan with a feeling of being well and
truly offside.
