Bend It Like Beckham (2003, DVD)

World, meet Jess (Parminder Nagra) -- short for Jesminder -- a young teen girl in the suburbs of London. In her traditional Sikh family, she's a bit of a rebel, thinking of football (soccer for us Yanks), and one day making it big. Enough so that she daydreams of playing alongside champion David Beckham. Even to the point where she has conversations with the player's photo over her bed at night.

Alas, Jess's family isn't quite so bending. Her long-suffering father, Mr. Bhamra (Anuper Kher) is an airline pilot, more or less trying to keep peace in the home by yielding to his wife's (Shaheen Khan) strong-arm tactics of dominating her daughters and turning them into good wives and mothers. It's a role that the elder daughter, Pinky (Archie Panjabi) seems to fit well, being an airline attendant and getting ready for her forthcoming wedding.

And this insular, restricted world where men and women both wear traditional clothing, children are expected to obey their parents, and lifetime partners are chosen for you, is one that Jess isn't sure that she wants. But she's also not quite sure that doesn't either.

Spotted by another soccer player, Jules (Kiera Knightly), Jess finds herself not only becoming friends with an English girl, but a strong player on an all-girl soccer team. Jules has parent problems too, mostly in the form of her mother, who wishes that her daughter would be a "girl" and not so involved with soccer. It's a boost for Jess's self-confidence and strength, but it also means lying to her parents, and worst still, feeling a great deal of affection for Joe (Jonathan Rhys Meyers), the team's coach. Mix in the culture clash between a minority, and the white, dominant English, and it's a story that is appealing on several levels.

It's this internal struggle that makes this film a worthwhile one. In the hands of the director and co-writer Gurinder Chadha, it becomes more than just a coming of age story, mixing in elements of sports, being a minority, and a girl playing a boy's sport. It could have been a trite tv-movie sort of film, but this one resists the temptation and rises well above the cliches.

Terrific soundtrack of modern and traditional Indian music, great costumes, actors that fit their parts, this is a fun film that doesn't moralize or talk down to either parents or children, and keeps the audience involved and interested in how the story will turn out.

Parents of a child who has a bit of a morale problem will find it useful to empathize with their children, and kids won't be offended by it either. There's a little bit of a scuffle, but it's mostly some slang that parents might not care for, and a shopping scene in a lingerie store, with the result of a rating of PG-13. On the whole, it's a balanced, even film that's great for a night home with the kids.

The DVD version has quite a few extras including an audio commentary by the director, a series of outtakes and deleted scenes, several featurettes about the making of the film, and a music video and trailers.