Alive and kicking: soccer matches, class struggle, and a gay best friend--Bend It Like Beckham is a real crowd pleaser.

Bend It Like Beckham * Directed and cowritten by Gurinder Chadha * Starring Parminder Nagra, Keira Knightley, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, and Ameet Chana * Opens March 28 in selected markets * Fox Searchlight

Somewhere in the chilly bowels of an Oxbridge University library, some earnest double major in visual arts and sociology must be toiling over a thesis titled "Billy Elliot's Indian Soul Sister: Class, Gender Expectation, and Disapproving Daddies in 21stCentury England."

It is obvious from the evidence presented by Billy Elliot and now Bend It Like Beckham that they are not giving children the proper Barbie and Ken rudiments across the Atlantic. Where else would a coal miner's son have temerity to throw over boxing for ballet dancing? Or, as in Beckham's case, the daughter of an Indian immigrant aspire to be a soccer player?

While her big sister, Pinky, is following her womanly predestination by becoming engaged, contrary Jess Bharara (the daisy-fresh Parminder Nagra) would rather be kicking around the soccer ball with a gay male Indian buddy who passes for straight (Ameet Chana) and a straight girlfriend, Jules (slinky Keira Knightley), whose mother thinks she's a lesbian. Against the wishes of her tradition-bound parents, Jess sneaks off to play with the local girl's league, where real women kick curveballs.

Bend It Like Beckham is the third and least interesting dramatic feature of onetime BBC news reporter Gurinder Chadha (Bhaji on the Beach and What's Cooking?). As these things go, it is also the one that will put her in the big leagues. Already a monster hit in its native England, Beckham has it all: a big, fat ethnic wedding; a flashy rock soundtracks; nubile teenage girls in athletic shorts; irreverent end-credit outtakes; a none-too-heavy lesson in tolerance; and a climactic hetero goodbye kiss at the airport.

The recipient of Jess's parting kiss (she is going off to an American university, where she will presumably have her every movement monitored by the U.S. government) is Velvet Goldmine's funky-pretty Jonathan Rhys Meyers, who plays Jess and Jules's coach, Joe. Amid the comic dissonance provided by the girls' respective families, Joe's restrained admixture of empathy, affection, and professional esteem for Jess is one of the film's more surprising tensions.

Writer-director Chadha has an instinct for such idiosyncratic touches: She tends to ease up on the formula pedal when other directors would be inclined to floor it. There is a whole other movie waiting to be made about the character who is the secretly gay athlete, but the two-faced lifestyle of a straight Indian-British girl who'd rather be scoring goals than frying samosas reminds us that closets come in all shapes and sizes.

Stuart is film critic and senior film writer at Newsday.