"Bend It Like Beckham" trades on the trendy movie themes of girl power and culture clashes, along with that old stand-by: My parents just don't understand me. Oh, and it's a soccer movie, too.

"Bend It Like Beckham" -- along with films like " A League of Their Own," "Stick It" and "Love & Basketball" -- does not fit this pattern, and that alone makes it stand out, even to this day.

Today, “Bend It Like Beckham” is a political film. For Anisha Gupta Müller, a biracial, queer fitness instructor and gender activist in Berlin, who grew up in Oxford and watched the film in ...

Whack it like Wyatt-Hodge, hit high with Heather Knight and smash it like Sciver-Brunt! Bend It Like Beckham, the 2002 classic, was ahead of its time, celebrating culture and creating ...

"Bend It Like Beckham," the third feature film by Gurinder Chadha ("Bhaji on the Beach," "What's Cooking"), was a smash hit in Britain last year and is now making its way to theaters Stateside.

Bend It Like Beckham never threatens to break free from the strictures of formula, but its crowd-pleasing exuberance serves as a potent reminder of why formulas exist in the first place.

Beckham is British soccer superstar David Beckham. “Bend it” refers to putting an effective goalie-eluding spin on the ball. And the youngster who wants to be able to bend it like Beckham in ...

An Anglo-Indian girl gets to realize her dream after meeting a blonde English tomboy in "Bend It Like Beckham," an amusing comedy set in the world of women's amateur soccer. Writer-helmer Gurinder ...

Bend It Like Beckham is 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 ...

The Brits have always loved turning movies into stage musicals, arguably even more than Broadway producers. Now comes word that a musical adaptation of Bend It Like Beckham — the 2002 film ...

In "Bend It Like Beckham," the lead character Jess (Parminder K. Nagra) fights cultural and familial norms just to have the chance to play soccer. Photo by Sundance/WireImage via Getty Images ...