Metacritic reviews

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 Best'' -- yet before long, you catch on to how buoyant and funny and original it is.

Terrifically fun entertainment; wonderfully shot and acted, instilled with spirit and life and able to woo us with its exhuberant freshness.

I'm still smiling as I recall Jess, the soccer star-to-be, standing behind her straitlaced mother in the kitchen and casually bouncing a head of lettuce on her knee.

Energetic, eager-to-please culture-clash comedy.

Much of the value -- entertainment and otherwise -- of seeing a culture-specific movie is to connect with a larger world than your everyday life offers.

Lightweight, thoroughly charming fluff.

Director and co-writer Gurinder Chadha continues in the vein of her previous movies, "What's Cooking?" and "Bhaji on the Beach," exploring with humor and compassion how cultures adapt in foreign climes.

Bend It Like Beckham is supposedly a movie about youth; its biggest shortcoming is that it rarely feels young.

Just a few years ago, the generally felt aspiration of ethnic groups was to blend in with the majority culture. Today it's to flourish in modern society while actively remembering old-country values...Bend It Like Beckham could cement the trend.

There's nothing terribly bad about Bend It Like Beckham -- in fact it's a fine Friday-night-out film -- it's just that it strikes me as being an awful little piffle cloaked in the garb of something so much more.