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Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.

67
$9.99
75
24 City
66
Adoration
74
Afghan Star
48
Alien Trespass
56
American Violet
82
Anvil! The Story of Anvil
57
Away We Go
81
Beaches of Agnes, The
62
Big Man Japan
28
Big Shot-Caller, The
78
Boys: The Sherman Brothers' Story, The
55
Brothers Bloom, The
82
Burma VJ: Reporting from a Closed Country
xx
Call of the Wild
63
Cheri
62
Cherry Blossoms
63
Dead Snow
65
Departures
18
Downloading Nancy
58
Easy Virtue
70
End of the Line, The
77
Every Little Step
64
Examined Life
80
Food, Inc.
38
Gigantic
56
Girl from Monaco, The
67
Girlfriend Experience, The
87
Gomorrah
89
Goodbye Solo
63
Great Buck Howard, The
79
Harvard Beats Yale 29-29
xx
Home
82
Hunger
91
Hurt Locker, The
16
I Hate Valentine's Day
81
Il Divo
54
Is Anybody There?
71
Jerichow
58
Julia
74
Lemon Tree
36
Life is Hot in Cracktown
40
Limits of Control, The
42
Little Ashes
64
Lymelife
50
Management
57
Merry Gentleman, The
66
Moon
35
New York
62
Not Forgotten
xx
Offshore
78
O'Horten
64
Outrage
40
Paris 36
54
Pontypool
71
Pressure Cooker
52
Quiet Chaos
83
Revanche
67
Rudo y Cursi
86
Seraphine
65
Sex Positive
70
Shall We Kiss?
77
Sin Nombre
59
Sleep Dealer
74
Song of Sparrows, The
54
Stoning of Soraya M., The
82
Sugar
84
Summer Hours
61
Sunshine Cleaning
28
Surveillance
42
Tennessee
63
Tetro
64
Throw Down Your Heart
80
Tokyo Sonata
63
Tokyo!
70
Tony Manero
74
Treeless Mountain
88
Tulpan
74
Two Lovers
83
Tyson
83
U2 3D
60
Under Our Skin
69
Unmistaken Child
69
Valentino: The Last Emperor
22
What Goes Up
45
Whatever Works
57
Youssou Ndour: I Bring What I Love
91
Hurt Locker, The
89
Goodbye Solo
88
Tulpan
87
Gomorrah
86
Seraphine
84
Summer Hours
83
U2 3D
83
Revanche
83
Tyson
82
Burma VJ: Reporting from a Closed Country
82
Sugar
82
Hunger
82
Anvil! The Story of Anvil
81
Il Divo
81
Beaches of Agnes, The
80
Food, Inc.
80
Tokyo Sonata
79
Harvard Beats Yale 29-29
78
Boys: The Sherman Brothers' Story, The
78
O'Horten
77
Every Little Step
77
Sin Nombre
75
24 City
74
Treeless Mountain
74
Afghan Star
74
Two Lovers
74
Song of Sparrows, The
74
Lemon Tree
71
Pressure Cooker
71
Jerichow
70
Shall We Kiss?
70
Tony Manero
70
End of the Line, The
69
Valentino: The Last Emperor
69
Unmistaken Child
67
$9.99
67
Rudo y Cursi
67
Girlfriend Experience, The
66
Adoration
66
Moon
65
Sex Positive
65
Departures
64
Outrage
64
Examined Life
64
Throw Down Your Heart
64
Lymelife
63
Tokyo!
63
Cheri
63
Dead Snow
63
Tetro
63
Great Buck Howard, The
62
Cherry Blossoms
62
Big Man Japan
62
Not Forgotten
61
Sunshine Cleaning
60
Under Our Skin
59
Sleep Dealer
58
Julia
58
Easy Virtue
57
Away We Go
57
Merry Gentleman, The
57
Youssou Ndour: I Bring What I Love
56
Girl from Monaco, The
56
American Violet
55
Brothers Bloom, The
54
Is Anybody There?
54
Pontypool
54
Stoning of Soraya M., The
52
Quiet Chaos
50
Management
48
Alien Trespass
45
Whatever Works
42
Little Ashes
42
Tennessee
40
Limits of Control, The
40
Paris 36
38
Gigantic
36
Life is Hot in Cracktown
35
New York
28
Big Shot-Caller, The
28
Surveillance
22
What Goes Up
18
Downloading Nancy
16
I Hate Valentine's Day
xx
Call of the Wild
xx
Home
xx
Offshore
Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
|
Bend It Like Beckham
Fox Searchlight Pictures
FILM:
MPAA RATING: PG-13 for language and sexual content
Starring
Parminder K. Nagra,
Keira Knightley,
Jonathan Rhys-Meyers,
Anupam Kher,
Archie Panjabi,
Shaznay Lewis,
Frank Harper,
and
Juliet Stevenson
A British film about a teenage girl named Jess (Nagra) living in London who must make a choice between following the traditions of her Indian family or pursuing her dream of becoming a soccer sensation. (Fox Searchlight)
| GENRE(S): |
Comedy
|
| WRITTEN BY: |
Gurinder Chadha
Paul Mayeda Berges
Guljit Bindra
|
| DIRECTED BY: |
Gurinder Chadha
|
| RELEASE DATE: |
DVD: September 30, 2003
Video: September 30, 2003
Theatrical: March 12, 2003
|
| RUNNING TIME: |
112 minutes, Color |
| ORIGIN: |
UK / Germany |

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
100
Entertainment Weekly
Owen Gleiberman
The most exhilarating movie so far this year. It's made up of many familiar elements -- think ''Monsoon Wedding'' meets ''My Beautiful Laundrette'' meets ''Personal Best'' -- yet before long, you catch on to how buoyant and funny and original it is.

91
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Paula Nechak
Terrifically fun entertainment; wonderfully shot and acted, instilled with spirit and life and able to woo us with its exhuberant freshness.

88
Philadelphia Inquirer
Carrie Rickey
Pure, undiluted joy.

88
Premiere
Glenn Kenny
Terrifically charming and energetic film.

88
USA Today
Claudia Puig
The juxtaposition between the fast-paced plays on the soccer field and the color-drenched, music-infused wedding party is a highlight of this captivating film.

88
Baltimore Sun
Chris Kaltenbach
A joyful celebration of spirit and endurance.

88
Chicago Sun-Times
Roger Ebert
I saw more important films at Sundance 2003, but none more purely enjoyable than Bend It Like Beckham, which is just about perfect as a teenage coming-of-age comedy.

80
Dallas Observer
Gregory Weinkauf
Bright, lively and liberating movie.

80
Los Angeles Times
Kenneth Turan
Smart, lively and altogether warmhearted dramatic comedy.

80
Washington Post
Desson Thomson
There's a great sense of fun in the cultural collision between Indian and British lifestyles -- often within the same person.

80
Washington Post
Rita Kempley
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.

80
Wall Street Journal
Joe Morgenstern
I'm still smiling as I recall Jess, the soccer star-to-be, standing behind her straitlaced mother in the kitchen and casually bouncing a head of lettuce on her knee.
75
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
Liam Lacey
Energetic, eager-to-please culture-clash comedy.

75
Charlotte Observer
Lawrence Toppman
The feel-good movie of a feel-blah movie year, with all the positive qualities and one negative trait that this description implies.

75
ReelViews
James Berardinelli
Enjoyable enough that the sprinkles of artificial sweetness in the mix don't do lasting or irreparable damage.

75
Boston Globe
Ty Burr
The film's most natural appeal is to adolescent athletes -- in particular, cleat-wearing young ladies who will bask in its hard-won girl-power message. This is a movie with bruised shins and a huge heart.

75
Miami Herald
Rene Rodriguez
As the movie breathlessly cuts back and forth from a boisterous wedding celebration to a high-stakes soccer match, even the grumpy cynics will have been won over.

75
Rolling Stone
Peter Travers
Writer-director Gurinder Chadha juggles all the angles with flair and fairness. Like Nagra and Knightley, the movie is a sweetheart.

70
The Onion (A.V. Club)
Nathan Rabin
Like the rest of the film, Beckham's climax is surprisingly satisfying, however, in large part because director Gurinder Chadha films the competing big game and big fat Indian wedding of Nagra's sister with equivalently bursting levels of color, panache, and verve.

70
Chicago Reader
J.R. Jones
Fine character work by Juliet Stevenson, Archie Panjabi, and Bollywood regular Anupam Kher make this well worth seeing.

70
New York Magazine
Peter Rainer
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.

70
Film Threat
Rick Kisonak
The portrait of traditional Indian life Chadha provides manages to mine laughs from characters without resorting to making them laughable.

70
LA Weekly
Ella Taylor
Enjoyably shameless confection.

63
Chicago Tribune
Mark Caro
Much of the value -- entertainment and otherwise -- of seeing a culture-specific movie is to connect with a larger world than your everyday life offers.

63
New York Post
Megan Lehmann
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.

60
Variety
Derek Elley
Writer-helmer Gurinder Chadha assembles a gallery of broadly played stereotypes into a movie about social attitudes that's more rooted in small-screen sitcom than anything deeper.

60
TV Guide
Maitland McDonagh
Lightweight, thoroughly charming fluff.

60
Slate
David Edelstein
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. But the movie is way, way too pleased with itself.

60
Film Threat
Darrin Keene
While this film offers plenty of laughs and a cool soundtrack, it also tiptoes around complex subjects of social change and inter-racial relations.

50
Austin Chronicle
Marc Savlov
There's nothing terribly bad about Bend It Like Beckham -- in fact it's a fine Friday-night-out film -- it's just that it strikes me as being an awful little piffle cloaked in the garb of something so much more.

50
Salon.com
Stephanie Zacharek
Bend It Like Beckham is supposedly a movie about youth; its biggest shortcoming is that it rarely feels young.

50
New York Daily News
Jami Bernard
Director and co-writer Gurinder Chadha continues in the vein of her previous movies, "What's Cooking?" and "Bhaji on the Beach," exploring with humor and compassion how cultures adapt in foreign climes.

50
Christian Science Monitor
David Sterritt
Just a few years ago, the generally felt aspiration of ethnic groups was to blend in with the majority culture. Today it's to flourish in modern society while actively remembering old-country values...Bend It Like Beckham could cement the trend.

50
The New York Times
Dana Stevens
Its cheery inoffensiveness, though, is in some ways disappointing.

50
San Francisco Chronicle
Mick LaSalle
Routine, genial sports movie.

20
Village Voice
Jessica Winter
Only silent Becks himself rises unstained from this reheated ethno-niche stew.


The average user rating for this movie is 7.9 (out of 10) based on 84 User Votes
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