Bend It Like Beckham (2002)
There's a specific kind of shame that comes with admitting your thirteen-year-old self got something badly wrong. I first watched Gurinder Chadha's Bend It Like Beckham back in 2002, and my overwhelming memory of it was that it felt cheap, almost like a British kids' TV movie that had somehow wriggled its way onto the big screen. I couldn't take it seriously. I filed it away and didn't think much about it for years. Then I went back to it as an adult, and I owe it a bit of an apology.
It's actually not that bad at all. More than that, it's easy to see now why it's cemented itself as a modern British classic. There's a vibrant, specific quality to the world Chadha builds here, a very particular slice of early 2000s West London life that feels both lived-in and genuinely affectionate. The cultural clashes, the family dynamics, the generational tensions between parents trying to hold onto tradition and daughters trying to sprint beyond it, all of it lands with considerably more warmth and weight than my teenage self ever bothered to notice. I was too busy being a snob about the production values, apparently.
What really strikes me on this revisit is just how forward-thinking the whole thing was. Women's football has exploded in coverage, respect and fanbase in recent years, but back in 2002 it was barely a blip in the mainstream conversation. Chadha was championing the women's game right from the kickoff, and that matters. Parminder Nagra is brilliant as Jess, passionate and funny and entirely believable as someone whose love of football is bone-deep. And Keira Knightley, who I'll be honest I expected to be the weak link, is surprisingly good as Jules. She brings a real tomboyish energy to the role, a genuine scrappiness, and the on-pitch chemistry between the two of them makes the football sequences feel actually earned rather than staged. I've seen films with far bigger budgets make sport feel far less exciting.
The film shares something with Mustang, which I also reviewed, in the way it uses sport and freedom of movement as a lens for exploring what it means to be a young woman pushing against the expectations of family and culture. Mustang is the darker, more urgent film by some distance, but both are doing something similar at their core, telling stories about girls who simply want the space to be themselves, and the walls that keep getting thrown up around them.
That said, Bend It Like Beckham isn't without its problems, and the biggest one is hard to ignore. The romantic subplot involving the coach is a genuine misstep. It didn't need to be there. It feels forced, a bit awkward, and it keeps pulling focus away from the far more compelling story of two young women fighting for the right to play the sport they love. Every time the film detours into that territory, you can feel the energy drain out of the room. It's the kind of narrative decision that makes you wonder who in the development process thought it was the essential missing ingredient, because it really, really wasn't.
But look past that clunky detour and the heart of the film is absolutely in the right place. It's warm, it's funny in places, it's genuinely well-acted, and it had something important to say about both multiculturalism and women in sport at a time when not enough people were saying it. Does it have dated moments? A few, yes. Is it a stone-cold flawless classic? No. But it's a fixture worth revisiting, and my thirteen-year-old self was well off the mark.
Three stars.
Rating: ★★★ | Year: 2002 | Watched: 2026-06-24
Where to watch
Watch in the UK
Stream: HBO Max Amazon Channel · Now TV Cinema · Channel 4 Plus · HBO Max
Rent: Apple TV Store · Rakuten TV · Amazon Video · Google Play Movies
Buy: Apple TV Store · Rakuten TV · Amazon Video · Google Play Movies
Physical: Amazon UK · Zavvi
Watch in the US
Stream: Disney Plus
Rent: Amazon Video · Apple TV Store · Google Play Movies · YouTube
Buy: Amazon Video · Apple TV Store · Google Play Movies · YouTube
Physical: Amazon US
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