Bend It Like Beckham: Critic Reviews

Made with a craftsmanship and pizzazz that restores your appreciation for honest commercial moviemaking, Bend It Like Beckham puts a new definition of femininity on screen, casual and cool and in your face.

Coming after Monsoon Wedding and My Son the Fanatic, Bend It Like Beckham seems like a step backward.

Gurinder Chadha's third film is an undemanding, unambitious comedy.

A rare amalgam of funny, sweet, action-packed and inspiring.

At the heart of it is Nagra, an engaging sweetheart with a great pair of feet.

You seldom leave a theater walking on air, much less float all through a movie. But the joyous Bend It Like Beckham never lets you down.

This is a movie with bruised shins and a huge heart.

A shrill, poky comedy about good sportsmanship and the pursuit of big dreams.

It elicits laughs and the kind of rousing, root-for-the-underdog enthusiasm that translates well in any culture.

Every generation has to discover the same cliches that were drummed into previous generations, and kids could do worse than to learn them from this film.

Just about perfect as a teenage coming-of-age comedy.

At least its big-hearted earnestness seems honest, with the girls' friendship carrying more spark than the obligatory love subplot.

Fine character work by Juliet Stevenson, Archie Panjabi, and Bollywood regular Anupam Kher makes this well worth seeing.

No mere feel-good movie, it's a feel-great movie.

Plays very well indeed in modern America, where our melting pot of immigrant cultures inevitably leads to clashes over assimilation and tradition.

More rooted in small-screen sitcom than anything deeper.

An energetic, feel-good blend of comedy, romance and benign drama -- with a side dish of social commentary -- that works despite its strict adherence to the culture clash/generation gap formula.

Chadha has an ear and an eye for the funny, the touching and the just plain odd in her culture's gradual assimilation into the British mainstream.

You'll probably fall for it anyway -- I did.

Bend It Like Beckham is supposedly a movie about youth; its biggest shortcoming is that it rarely feels young.

The movie isn't unwatchable. It's clumsily good-natured, the actors are appealing, and there are worse ways to spend two hours than looking at pretty young girls in shorts kicking balls.

Bend It Like Beckham is enjoyable enough that the sprinkles of artificial sweetness in the mix don't do lasting or irreparable damage.

A charming, often hilarious experience, brimming with excellent performances and clever dialogue.

The acting is as nimble as the footwork.

Like Nagra and Knightley, the movie is a sweetheart.