Bend It Like Beckham Reviews
The acting is as nimble as the footwork.
Fine character work by Juliet Stevenson, Archie Panjabi, and Bollywood regular Anupam Kher makes this well worth seeing.
More rooted in small-screen sitcom than anything deeper.
Time Out
Top CriticNagra and Knightley have winning personalities, but credit should also go to writer/director Chadha for getting the balance right between humour and pathos, and sporting and romantic action.
Every generation has to discover the same clichés that were drummed into previous generations, and kids could do worse than to learn them from this film.
As Spencer Tracy once said of Katharine Hepburn, there's not much meat there, but what's there is choice.
Full Review
| Original Score: B+
Beckham is so earnestly yearning it packs an emotional impact far greater than the sum of its parts.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
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.
No mere feel-good movie, it's a feel-great movie.
| Original Score: 3.5/4
That rare breed of crowd pleaser, one in which it doesn't matter that you immediately know how it's all going to end, because getting there is so much fun.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
A rare amalgam of funny, sweet, action-packed and inspiring.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3.5/4
Chadha's created something magical; an atmosphere of happiness and hope, in which we could all bend a ball like Beckham -- or like Jess.
| Original Score: 3.5/4
Plays very well indeed in modern America, where our melting pot of immigrant cultures inevitably leads to clashes over assimilation and tradition.
| Original Score: B+
It elicits laughs and the kind of rousing, root-for-the-underdog enthusiasm that translates well in any culture.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
This is a movie with bruised shins and a huge heart.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
A warm, winning comedy.
| Original Score: 3/4
At the heart of it is Nagra, an engaging sweetheart with a great pair of feet.
It may not have the sly 'bend' of a Beckham kick, but it operates in a straight-ahead fashion that's guaranteed to score with most audiences.
| Original Score: B
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.
A colorful, heartfelt film that keeps spinning with new versions of old ideas.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3.5/4
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.
| Original Score: 4/5
I don't want the title to scare people away, because this is such a wonderful film.
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.
Full Review
| Original Score: A
At least its big-hearted earnestness seems honest, with the girls' friendship carrying more spark than the obligatory love subplot.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/4
Just about perfect as a teenage coming-of-age comedy.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3.5/4
Like Nagra and Knightley, the movie is a sweetheart.
| Original Score: 3/4
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.
| Original Score: 2.5/4
A smart, lively and altogether warmhearted dramatic comedy that blends tradition and modernity on screen as adroitly as teenage Jess does in her irresistibly complicated life.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/5
Bend It Like Beckham is supposedly a movie about youth; its biggest shortcoming is that it rarely feels young.
Coming after Monsoon Wedding and My Son the Fanatic, Bend It Like Beckham seems like a step backward.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/5
A shrill, poky comedy about good sportsmanship and the pursuit of big dreams.
Bend It Like Beckham is enjoyable enough that the sprinkles of artificial sweetness in the mix don't do lasting or irreparable damage.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
A charming, often hilarious experience, brimming with excellent performances and clever dialogue.
