Rating: 
Summary: Soccer Films Rule 2003
Review: There is two soccer films being released in the U.S. this year, both have exceeded my expectations (which were high already) by a long shot. The 2 films are my favorite so far this year, those films being Beckham, and Shaolin Soccer, which is set for a U.S. release this August. Beckham however, is my favorite of the two films. Beckham throws so much positive energy to the audience and to myself I feel as if I'm watching Greek Wedding for the first time all over again, only Beckham is even better than Wedding, which is saying a lot considering Greek Wedding is one of my all time favorite romantic comedies. There is not a single dull moment in Beckham, and most of the laughs had me laughing through entire scenes, it doesn't get much better than this when it comes to good hearted comedies. This film definatly deserves an outting like Greek Wedding also highly deserved, although it's doubtful for that phenomenon to be repeated, Beckham certainly does obtain the power to reach that goal.
Rating:
Summary: Football and life as one
Review: I though this film was fantastic! It had a great pace to it, much like a football (soccer) match. The characters were "real" poeple, and you really got to know them, and actually care what happens to them. I love sports-type movies, and this one, along with Slapshot, are by far my favoties. This will certainly be finding a home of my DVD shelf once it is available. Go see it in the cinema before it's gone ...!
Rating:
Summary: Amazing
Review: This is one of the best movies ive seen this year. Keira Knightley and Parminder were awesome. The director seemed to be able to both respect the Hindu religion and poke fun at it, an interesting paradox. An awesome, uplifting movie.
Rating:
Summary: Number One in my Heart
Review: Bend it Like Beckham is so much more than a great movie. It is a lesson about life, love, tradition and perserverance. You don't need to be a die-hard fan of soccer, or Beckham to enjoy this movie. It is a light-hearted look at the challenges that life throws you, the heights that love takes you and the accomplishments you can acheive when you put your all in. It's funny and serious and can be understood by audiences of all ages, races, cultures, and sexes. Sure to become an instant classic, Bend it like Beckham has wormed it's way to being the number one movie on my list!
Rating:
Summary: One of the most delightful films this year!!!
Review: I cannot even express how impressed with this movie I was. Parminder Nagra did an excellent job as Jesminder Bhrama, a young woman who just finished high school and gets the chance to play football on a women's team. The music in the movie blended well with the plot lines and kept the movie going. Kiera Knightley did an excellent job as Juliet (Jules) Paxton, another young footballer who sees talent in Jess and quickly becomes her best friend. Jonathan Rhys-Meyers did an excellent job as well, Playing the Hounslow Harriers coach Joe. The chemistry between Jess and Joe is great. This amazing film also teaches to break stereotypes and to learn to be happy with who you are. This is a movie I would definitely recommend for everyone to see.
Rating:
Summary: Asian Assimilation
Review: Throughout the movie, Bend It Like Beckham, the theme of Asian assimilation is the most common one. There is an evident conflict that Jess, the heroine, deals with regarding her secular and religious and cultural life. Jess is an excellent soccer player with traditional and religious Indian Sikh parents, and she needs to live a life with a strong religious foundation, while still expressing her talents for soccer.
The movie does a very good job in showing Jess' parents' intervention with her life, their criticisms and hopes for her. Her parents regard religion as extremely important while placing a very strong emphasis on her education. Jess' parents are opposed to Jess' soccer playing because it takes away from her religion and "everything they [her parents] know".
During the course of the movie, the director teaches the viewer much about Indian-Sikh-immigrants' life in Britain, or any other country. The movie includes common phrases in Punjabi that are used in the family's everyday life. Several examples of these phrases are "Hai Raba!" (= Oh My G-D!), "chi, chi, chi" (=bad, bad, bad), and many more. In addition, the movie conveys many of the important values that the parents, as Sikhs and Indians, wanted to instill in their daughters. It was important that Jess and Pinky learn to respect their elders and know how to cook traditional meals.
It is evident that in the traditional Indian culture, women were viewed on a different level than men. When Jess finished telling her parents about joining the girls' soccer team, her father told her that she should start behaving like a proper woman. Being a "proper woman" often indicates possessing the knowledge of cooking, not spending unnecessary time outside the house, and many more feminine stereotype-occupations and skills.
The movie shows a teenager's struggle to balance two cultures, which is much more difficult when one of the cultures is combined with a religion. While Jess is involved in soccer, without her parent's knowledge, she learns to cook Punjabi dinner along with preparing for her sister's wedding. Even on the wedding day, Jess goes to play in her final soccer match and returns to have a fantastic time at her wedding.
A phenomenon that appears in this movie in addition to Monsoon Wedding is a to-be bride's tendency to have a relationship with someone before her wedding. This should not be seen as a generalization made about all Indian brides, but merely an indication that perhaps assimilation is seeping in and causing these actions. These affairs may be conducted because an affair is common in many Western TV shows. Perhaps the brides are just trying to be "western" and "modern".
Overall the movie did a good job of showing the conflict Jess had with her parents, and in the end their solution was a very sensible one. Mr. and Mrs. Bamra allowed Jess to attend college in America while still instilling in her important values. In the end Jess got the best of both worlds; Jess gained from the opportunities she has in living in the United States for four years and still maintaining a good foundation in her religion in culture, which will accompany her for life.
I enjoyed the movie very much. The cast did a great acting job and really became their character. It was difficult for me to form an opinion about what Jess should do, since I am a religious person myself. The different teen-related themes really drew me in and kept me interested in the movie. The soccer and challenge of getting to soccer practice, also helped hold my interest, because there was always the possibility that Jess would be caught and be forbidden from playing soccer. The suspense and constant problems and conflict are really what hold the movie together and make it what it is.
Rating:
Summary: A film for everyone.
Review: I will not belabor a review or description as such here, as the others who have commented have done a bang up job. Rather, I find it more beneficial to simply offer my feelings of this touching, funny, and inspirational film to movie goers and watchers in hopes that it reaches as many people as possible. Being a soccer fan and having read minimal descriptions of Bend it Like Beckham I was originally interested in seeing it with modest expectations. When it suprisingly arrived at my local cinema I took a chance to see it and was greatly moved. On the one hand there was a lot in this film that I could personally relate to: I'm Irish, my girlfriend is Asian, and I have witnessed much of cultural conditions out of which this film takes place if only in a different milieu. Without saying to much I can tell you that Bend it Like Beckham is an ambitious film that attempts to bring many genres of typical American films together, and it succeeds in a way that I think most American films fail. It is part romance, part sports film, part cultural commentary, part commedy, part foreign film (generically speaking and notwithstanding its being British), part feel-good movie, and perhaps even part existential film. For anyone who may wish to see a brilliant film that is as empowering as it is funny, see Bend it Like Beckham!
Rating:
Summary: Bend It Like Beckham ("BILB")
Review: "BILB" was a hit in Asia where it was released last year, and it is good to know that this small movie has also done well on both sides of the Atlantic. It boasts a good story, script, casting and direction and well deserves its boxoffice success. I think Roger Ebert's 3-1/2 stars review of the film also helps draw in the movie crowd. This is a refreshing movie because it provides a rare and colorful insight into the life of a Punjabi-British middle-class family living in the tight-knit Sikh community in London. The story is not just about a teenage girl (Jess) who has an obsession for playing football (or "soccer" as it is known in the US) but is also about the clash between the older and the younger generations that exists in every community and culture. After watching the movie, one will realize that teenagers are basically the same everywhere, whatever their background or culture!To me, the most enjoyable parts of the movie are the humour, Jess's fascination with football (and trying not to get caught by her parents for sneaking out to play the game) and the lavish Punjabi wedding scene. The last offers the viewer the chance to "experience" the beauty and tradition of another culture through the traditional wedding ceremony of Jess's sister. If in the movie, "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" you get a Greek wedding, in "Deer Hunter" a Russo-Catholic wedding and in "The Godfather" an Italian wedding, well, watch "BILB" for an unforgetable Punjabi wedding complete with scenes of the hectic (and oftentimes hilarious) preparations, the elaborate ceremony itself and the marvelous songs, dance and merry-making. Parminder Nagra's portrayal of "Jess" is brilliant. You will laugh at the hilarious scene which takes place in the kitchen where Jess's mother is teaching Jess to cook. Behind her mother's back, Jess starts to "dribble" a round of cabbage on her knees (football-fashion) until she is "caught" by her mother and promptly dragged by the ears back to the stove to continue her cooking lesson. Another funny scene is when Jess's mother (after realizing the futility of trying to curb her daughter's interest in football and make her focus instead on homely duties and proper feminine behavior) throws up her hands in despair and tells her husband: "At least I taught her full Punjabi dinner. The rest is up to God." There are also scenes to make the tears well up in your eyes: when a tearful Jess is forced to "hang up" her football boots for good after her parents absolutely forbid her to play, and when Jess's best male buddy attempts to make a "great sacrifice" by asking Jess's parents for permission to marry her on the chance that her parents would THEN allow her to go to the U.S. to play football (confused? watch the movie for explanations!). Also the sad scene where Jess's father bitterly recounts the discrimination he faced as a young immigrant in Britain. Whatever you do, don't miss this meaningful and highly entertaining movie! Trivia: After her impressive performance in "BILB", Parminder Nagra has been offered a permanent spot in a future season of the TV series, "ER". She is to play a medical intern (in a role specially written for her). Kiera Knightly (who plays Jess's bestfriend, Juliette) also went on from "BILB" to land the plum role of "Lara" in ITV's 2002 adaptation of "Doctor Zhivago". But talented as she is, Knightly is totally unsuited to play "Lara" (the whole production is plain awful too!).
Rating:
Summary: Best Movie of the Year
Review: You don't want to miss this-- it's a blend of Fat greek wedding, Billy Elliot Monsoon wedding, and the Best Sports Movies. At the end of the movie the whole audience clapped. I've been to excellent movies before w here a few people tentatively put their hands together. I've never seen such an enthusiastic applause in a theater. And the movie deserves it. We went to the big local megaplex 24 theater movie house even though this is also showing in art movie theaters. And it was sold out, filled to capacity. This is a movie about a young woman's struggle with her Sikh Indian parents' rules and traditions versus being a contemporary adult who talks the same talk as all the other British kids and British Indian kids who, outside of the house, away from the parents are like any other older teen. The acting is superb. We have some great new faces destined for stardom. The music is an awesome blend of western rock and pop and Indian contemporary music. Good stories are built around characters who fascinate us, who we relate to, who we care about and this movie introduces a whole batch of them-- at least six superb actors who you will look forward to seeing again. They played out a script that provided the actors with wonderful characters who made complex, difficult decisions and showed brilliant flawed humanity.
This is a movie about clashing cultures and how real people adjust to those clashes. The World Trade Center Bombing was also about that clash of cultures. This movie does a beautiful job of showing how such clashes, fraught with strong emotion and opinons, can be worked out for a positive outcome. I'd like to see a similar movie with a clash between westerners and the Islamic world. It's important to build bridges through humor and positive emotions. This movie was fabulously successful at doing that. When we left the theater we felt great. This movie has something for everyone-- the drama of rebellion and the risk a child takes defying parents, romance, sports and plenty of humor. If this is bollywood-- India's answer to Hollywood, I'm ready for more!
Rating:
Summary: GOOAAALLLL!!!!!
Review: There has not been a better feel-good movie released this year than Gurinder Chadra's "Bend It Like Beckham." Made up of equal parts "Monsoon Wedding" (moving the Hindu family from India to England) and "Breaking Away" (substituting soccer for cycling and girls for boys), "Beckham" is guaranteed to have you leaving the theater lighter of heart and step than when you entered. At the heart of the film is Jess (Parminder Nagra), whose love of soccer horrifies her devout Hindu family and even endangers her sister's wedding into an even more traditional family. Encouraging Jess is her new friend Jules (Keira Knightley), star of the local girls' soccer team, who tells entrancing tales of professional women's soccer in America. But their shared attraction to Joe (Jonathan Rhys-Meyers), the team's brooding coach, soon causes trouble. Meanwhile, Jules' prattling mother (Juliet Stevenson) starts jumping to conclusions about what she perceives as her daughter's masculine behavior. It's no surprise to know that all these conflicts get resolved happily, with whipped cream and a cherry on top. That's the pleasure of a movie like "Bend It Like Beckham;" you go to see something that will make you feel good, and you get it, only seldom do you get it done so expertly. (The set of "Beckham" must have been a happy place to work, judging from the outtakes shown during the end credits.) "Bend It Like Beckham" takes us to its own sunny little world, and for two hours persuades us absolutely of its reality, and of the possibility of realizing all your dreams. What could be more fun than that?
|
