DVD
Review | Bend It Like Beckham
Written by: Kage
Alan
I was a bit worried that I was going to be
sitting down to watch another film where a group of underdogs come
together and take a sports team on to victory. That sort of film is
fine, but unless there’s something fresh about it that the writers
have managed to add into the mix, they all rather tend to be the
same. Fortunately, “Bend It Like Beckham” manages to avoid that
cliché altogether. Even better yet, the story delves inside an
orthodox Sikh household, something we don’t often catch a glimpse of
here in North America.
Jesminder (Paraminder Nagra, “ER”) is a young girl
who has just graduated from high school and is spending her last summer
before college helping the family with her sister’s impending wedding,
listening to her elders and playing football (soccer as it’s called in
the US) in the park with her friends. While many of the girls her age
are fantasizing about boys and finding the right guy, Jes dreams of
playing as well as David Beckham. Naturally, that doesn’t go over well
with her parents and even more so when a footballer from a girl’s team,
Jules (Keira Knightley, “The Hole”), invites her to try out for the
team.
Unbeknownst to her parents, Jes decides to pursue
the sport and is soon finding all sorts of ways to sneak out of the
house and away from the family to practice. With the help of their
coach, Joe (Jonathan Rhys-Meyers, “Velvet Goldmine”), she slowly begins
to emerge from her shell and explore the life that she wants to lead,
not what tradition dictates. The real challenge won’t be winning the
championship so much as convincing Jes’ parents that there is life
beyond their expectations.
Director Gurinder Chadha has once again grounded
the story within the family unit, just as she did in “What’s Cooking?”.
While it would have been easy to portray the parents and utterly
stubborn and old-fashioned, they are instead capable of seeing reason
and embracing change. That was refreshing. The supporting cast
members, especially Anupam Kher, Shaheen Khan, Archie Panjabi, Juliet
Stevenson and Ameet Chana all do a wonderful job with their roles and
make the film a joy to watch. If there is a weakness in “Bend It Like
Beckham”, it’s that at almost 2 hours in length, it does begin to feel
too long and the end of the film keeps going and going and going.
Fox has released “Bend It Like Beckham” in the
preferred Widescreen format. Colors are very vibrant in the film,
especially in the house sets, and this disc shows them off wonderfully.
Audio quality also tends to be quite nice, though the music is a little
louder in some scenes with dialogue than it should be. It’s either that
or I’m going deaf. Perhaps I’ve seen a few too many movies!
Fortunately, the film did well enough here in North America that Fox has
seen fit to include a multitude of extras. First up is an entertaining
commentary track with Gurinder Chadha and Co-Writer Paul Mayeda Berges.
The two play well off of each other and give some fun behind-the-scenes
anecdotes. Next is the 15 min “Who Wants To Cook Aloo Gobi?” featurette
hosted by the director as she demonstrates how to cook the dish, the 15
¼ min “Behind the Scenes Featurette: The Making of ‘Bend It Like
Beckham’” that includes interviews with cast and crew, 14 ½ minutes of
deleted scenes (many of which are easy to see why they were cut since
they don’t add any extra punch), a 6 ¼ minute music video compilation, 2
international trailers, an Aloo Gobi Recipe and a soundtrack promo spot.
It’s almost difficult to believe that there could
be so much humor coming out of Indian culture, but that comes from so
many of us not having been exposed to it before. “Bend It Like Beckham”
could have been another run-of-the-mill production, but it’s saved
because of some engaging field action, our unfamiliarity with the Indian
family dynamic and an overall sense of fun. This was a pleasure to
watch.
Film Rating:
B+
DVD Special Features: B+
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