Posted on April 28th, 2003 by Scraps.
Categories: Stuff, Movies.
I saw Bend It Like Beckham yesterday. It was pretty good, though I doubt I ever need to see it again. My interest rarely flagged, but nothing about it inspired any intense reaction, either (except for a couple of laugh out loud jokes, one of them a sports joke, which I won't spoil).
The thing that surprised me, inasmuch as it was playing in a hip art-house theatre, is how completely conventional it was. It's about a teenage Indian girl in England who has a great talent for football, and is recruited by a white girl to play for an all-girls team, but whose traditional parents completely disapprove of her talent and forbid her to play, forcing her to sneak around.
The movie develops its storylines in familiar, American-movie ways. There's nothing very subtle about it. You have the second-generation immigrant fighting to fit in while fighting her traditionalist parents and culture; the girl buddies who are severed over a mutual interest in the same boy; the sports story of adversity and come-from-behind individual triumph (after the mandatory individual failure in mid-story). None of these storylines is developed with any originality. Both girls are even saddled with obstructionist mothers and softer fathers.
The biggest irritation about the movie is the heavy reliance on music montages. Man, I hate that device, and there are at least half a dozen instances in this movie. Every time it happened -- quick cutting that never lets you look at any image for more than a second or two -- it reminded me of naked expository passages in prose, a lazy way of communicating information that ought to be embedded in the story itself. It also reminded me of how masterfully Peter Weir does music scenes with no dialogue in his movies: the big difference is that Weir doesn't do quick cutting, he lets a scene languorously unfold to music; it still feels like a story being told, just not with words. (A good example is the barn-raising scene in Witness.)
It also indulges one of the worst cliches of sports movies: the climactic triumph in slow motion. This isn't just hackneyed; it robs the scene of power, in my opinion. Slow motion is great for close examination of action and detail, but real-time is far more effective for conveying a vividly impressive athletic achievement, and emotional power.
Each of the storylines is wrapped up happily and neatly, in each case a little too neatly to be entirely believable, but very much in accordance with Hollywood style.
That said, while it had nothing original, it did what it did well; the cliches were cliches, but they weren't clumsy or stupid. The story unfolded at a good pace, with a fair amount of wit and believably human dialogue; all the performances were good, and John Rhys-Meyers fans should note that he plays the girls' coach (and love interest) and carries the part well, despite the occasionally by-the-numbers Supportive and Self-Searching dialogue he has to utter.
It's pleasantly diverting, but despite the potentially serious cultural and gender story, never aspires to be anything more. Not a waste of time or money; won't stick in my head a year from now. Pretty much the definition of a three-star movie.
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