Bend it Like Beckham

Rating: ****/*****, or 7/10

Delightful multiculti feel-good comedy about a teenage girl (Parminder Nagra) from orthodox Sikh parents who loves playing football despite her parents' objections and joins an all-girl football team after being encouraged to do so by a local white girl (Keira Knightley in her breakthrough role). Matters are complicated when both of them fall in love with their handsome trainer (Jonathan Rhys Myers) with a place in the Finals in the balance. Good spirited film successfully delivers the age old message that people should follow their own dreams to find happiness, no matter what others think or be afraid to break with traditions. Though such a statement seems a total cliché, the amount of fun this film provides makes it well worth a watch, plus the social conventions of modern day muticultural England explored here make for an interesting overall background. Nagra convincingly portrays a teenage girl despite being 27 years old, while she has excellent chemistry with Knightley who was a decade younger at the time of filming.

Starring: Parminder Nagra, Keira Knightley, Jonathan Rhys Myers

Directed by Gurinder Chadha

UK: Kintop Pictures, 2002