This romantic comedy melds "Bend It Like Beckham" with "Twelfth Night," Shakespeare's comedy of mistaken identities. The teen date-movie crowd is more likely to be familiar with David Beckham than the Bard of Avon, but it doesn't matter. The movie is cute, which is 95 percent of the genre's appeal.
The perpetually bubbly Amanda Bynes stars. She's a soccer star who has been told by her goalkeeper boyfriend that she's not good enough to play with the boys. So she disguises herself as her brother and joins a rival team, hoping to beat her now ex-boyfriend at his own game.
The Shakespearean influence comes into play between practices. Bynes falls for a guy on her new team (Channing Tatum) but can't tell him without revealing her identity. Meanwhile, his ex-girlfriend (Laura Ramsey) falls for Bynes -- or, at least, the guy Bynes is pretending to be. The rest of the movie involves Bynes trying to stifle her romantic urges while discouraging Ramsey's. Confusion runs amok. But it's all upbeat, oh-so-cute confusion.
Rated PG-13; sexual references.
JEFF STRICKLER
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