IT has lots of football and pretty girls in sportswear but Bend It Like Beckham is not a lad's movie for the Loaded generation. Instead, call it a less hard East Is East or an Anglo-Asian Gregory's Girl, as East meets West and girl power meets goal power.

Gurinder Chadha, the director of charming social comedies Bhaji On The Beach and What's Cooking, wraps a celebration of the bonding spirit of our national sport inside a sweet and tender study of teenage growing pains and dream fulfilment.

Jess (newcomer Parminder Nagra) can bend a ball like Beckham, the face on every poster on her bedroom walls and the supplier of a peach of a cross for her dream winning goal at Old Trafford.

Trouble is, while her parents admire her individual spirit, they have more traditional Indian ideas for her life ahead: more hard study, a nice marriage to a nice Indian boy and a life-long quest to perfect the cooking of Punjabi dinners. Her place is in the home in London suburbia, not on the right wing of the local girls' football team.

She decides otherwise, applying subterfuge as slippery as her dribbling skills to join the team with encouragement from star striker Jules (Keira Knightley) and the hunky Irish coach, Joe (Jonathan Rhys Meyers).

Like Jess, they have their own demons to face: Jules's brassy, social-climbing mother - a sardonic Juliet Stevenson, coming on like AbFab's Patsy without the chemicals - is just as averse to football as Jess's parents; Joe's brief playing career was crocked by injury.

Bend It Like Beckham's football scenes not only give this old-fashioned girl's own film its escape valve and energy, they also are far better filmed than the likes of the risible When Saturday Comes. If they have a comic-book quality in the manner of a Roy/Joy Of The Rovers, it adds to the contrast between fantasy and reality.

Chadha and her co-writers do venture towards sitcom territory but the balance between pathos and gentle humour - once such a strong suit in Coronation Street before the dark and daft took over - is well judged. Issues of prejudice and stereotype beliefs are addressed with a light rather than heavy tone; the directing, like the ultimately sunny story, is simple but effective; the performances, especially of Nagra and Knightley, are as lovely as they are lively. What a winner.

Updated: 09:25 Friday, April 12, 2002