Jess Bhamra (played with enthusiasm by Parminder K. Nagra) is a young Indian woman living in a London suburb who is obsessed with star Manchester midfielder and national celebrity David Beckham. The walls of her room are covered with posters of his matinee idol face, and she often speaks to these posters about her dreams of playing soccer and being as good as he is.
The title refers to the term "bending it," which is the the way Beckham curves the ball over the head of the goalkeeper when scoring a goal. There are only two obstacles preventing Jess from her desire to play soccer: her mother (played with a kind of "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" geniality by Shaheen Khan) and her father (Anupam Kher). Jess's parents desperately want her to become a more traditional woman and get married like her sister Pinky (Archie Panjabi) or, at the very least, put away the soccer ball.
Determined not to upset her parents any further, Jess tries to avoid soccer except for the occasional game in the park with her cousin and his unenlightened friends. During one of these games, a willowy British soccer player, Jules Paxton (played wonderfully by Kiera Knightley), approaches Jess and asks her to join the local women's team. Jess immediately accepts, and begins deceiving her parents in order to go to practices and to allow her footballer identity to bloom. Aiding Jess's self-discovery is her attractive coach, Joe (Jonathan Rhys-Meyers). Joe encourages and develops Jess's talent while quietly harboring a crush on her for the one aspect that she has never truly acknowledged-her immense beauty. Jess begins to have feelings for Joe as well, which does not bode well with Jules, who also has her eye on him.
Jess's talent quickly makes her one of the stars of the team. Unfortunately, when her parents discover that she is returning again and again to play on the team, they ground her or force her to learn how to cook a full Punjabi dinner. When her sister's wedding is scheduled for the same day as the team's championship match, Jess must decide what is more important to her-her family or her dream.
"Bend It like Beckham" is directed by Gurinder Chadha and written by Chadha, Paul Mayeda Berges and Guljit Bindra. Chadha also directed "What's Cooking?" which is an interwoven tale about families of different ethnicities preparing their Thanksgiving meals and dealing with societal pressures in Los Angeles. Chadha reached the same conclusions in her previous film that she reaches in this one. Regardless of your ethnicity, life presents the same obstacles and moments of joy. "Bend It like Beckham" also delivers also messages of the inoffensive feminism of Title IX and of the "follow your heart" variety.
The movie's cheery nature is akin to that of "My Big Fat Greek Wedding"-ethnicity is merely a subplot to what seems to be the universal goal of parents to ruin their children's lives. Everything works out in the end, of course. Each of the main characters in "Bend It" has problems communicating with his or her parents. Joe is on the outs with his father, because his father's overzealous coaching led to Joe busting his knee and losing a chance to play professionally. Jules' mother would love for her daughter to appear more traditionally feminine and seems perpetually worried that her daughter might be a lesbian, and Jess's mother finds soccer unsuitable for a young woman. These dilemmas are all worked out during the movie's 112 minutes-mostly during the last 15, to be more precise.
While "Bend It" has a winsome quality that comes partly from its script but mostly from the fresh performances of Nagra, Knightley and Khan, the movie tends to devolve at points into either a Nike commercial or the pastiest of ethnic comedies-even the racism encountered by Jess' father when first coming to London is used as fodder for a sitcom-esque speech on not giving up one's dreams.
If Chadha had edited out a few of the copious scenes in which Jess is caught once again playing soccer by her parents, or made some of the soccer moves seem more realistic, the movie could have been even more enjoyable. However, this is not to say that the movie suffers any fatal flaws. "Bend It like Beckham" has all the elements of a great comedy, especially the captivating presence of a new star.