Who wants to cook Aloo Gobi when you can bend a ball like Beckham? (Bend It Like Beckham (DVD))

Member Name: Whizz11

Product:	Bend It Like Beckham (DVD)
Date:	07/10/09 (59 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Football, Cultural issues

Disadvantages: None

Who wants to cook Aloo Gobi when you can bend a ball like Beckham?

Bend it Like Beckham is a 2002 British comedy. I think, to me, it's one of those films that when they were making it they probably didn't realise how successful or liked it would actually turn out to be. It stars, at that point in time fairly unknown actors who have gone on to have amazingly successful careers, Keira Knightley who is now, according to an article I read, the second highest paid actress in Hollywood, Parminer Nagra who has found fame in ER and Jonathan Rhys Meyers who has stared in The Tudors and is a model.

The Beckham in question is of course David Beckham and bend it refers to his amazing ability to bend a free kick into the back of the net (and hopefully can do it for England in 2010 too!) So, as you have probably guessed it, this film is about football and specifically girls in football. I am a girl and a football fan too so perhaps this is one of the reasons why I really liked this movie. I think the football scenes were quite realistic and I think I read somewhere that they used members of the Arsenal Ladies team who are quite successful to make up players in the women's football team.

Keira plays Jules, a football mad girl who is part of a girls football team coached by Joe (Jonathan Rhys Meyers). Nagra plays Jess, an Indian girl who is torn between her traditional Punjabi family and her love of football too. Jules discovers Jess playing in the park and invites her to join the football team and she turns out to be really good. She has to hide this secret from her parents and it's quite funny to watch her play and then have to run home and quickly change into a sari to attend family functions.

There is also a love story here too. Joe is rather good looking and unfortunately both girls develop a crush on him but, as is usually always the case, his feelings are only reciprocal to one of the girls. This causes friction between the two and they fall out.

I like this movie because it does highlight I'm sure real issues that face Indians in society today, the struggle between their traditional families and the Western country that they live in. I think they have portrayed it delicately and approached the issues well as well as coming to a nice conclusion. They managed to inject humour into the storylines as well as to not offend anyone I think and make a socially acceptable movie. According to an article I read, Planet Bollywood gave the film a 9 out of 10 and stated that the "screenplay not only explores the development of Jesse as a person, but also the changing values and culture of Indian teens who live in a foreign country.

The DVD is rated 12 for some moderate language and some moderate sexual references. It runs for approximately 103 minutes.

Summary: Bend It Like Backham DVD