Polite Society (2023)

FULL SPOILER-FREE REVIEW @ https://www.msbreviews.com/movie-reviews/polite-society-review-sundance-2023

"Polite Society looks straight out of a comic book. Endlessly energetic, witty humor, and packed with pretty great stunts. Nida Manzoor's quick edits, slow-motion, and stylistic title cards make this a distinctively fun feature debut. Not perfect, but the over-the-topness of it all brought it home for me."

Rating: B

I was really quite pleasantly surprised by this lively comedy that has as much to do with an episode of "Dr Who" as it does with the traditional family-based rom-com. "Lena" (Ritu Arya) falls hook line and sinker for the handsome (and wealthy) "Salim" (Akshay Khanna) but her savvy sister "Ria" (Prima Kansara) smells a rat. It's all going too smoothy, too quickly - and her otherwise quite rebellious sister has taken to wearing cardigans! The potential mother-in-law "Raheela" (the always over-dressed Nimra Bucha) exudes a certain menacing quality that soon has the sibling doing a bit of detective work of her own, aided by her two friends from school (whose inclusion in the drama is annoyingly superfluous!). Anyway, what now ensues is generally quite an entertaining, fairly action-packed, series of martial arts escapades that feature some dancing; high fashion; breaking and entering and - some old fashion Dolly-style cloning! The soundtrack is vibrant and the entire thing is just all over the place enough to stay interesting for most of the hundred minutes of screen time. It's unlikely to be a film you will remember, nor does it need to be seen in a cinema - but it's still an amiable enough, pretty far-fetched, effort from all concerned that passes the time effortlessly.