In the new movie Polite Society, Ria is a teenager in London who studies martial arts and wants to be a stuntwoman. She takes these things very seriously. And more than anything, she wants to meet famed British stuntwoman Eunice Huthart, and she sends the woman emails expressing her admiration, asking for advice, talking about her life, you know. A lot of emails. She hasn’t heard back yet.
Ria and her family are invited to an enormous party at the house of some rich acquaintances, and there they meet rich family’s son, whose mother has engineered the party so he can find a wife. Ria’s older sister, Lena, hits it off with the son, much to Ria’s revulsion—it’s not just that she thinks the guy is kind of a lothario, she suspects something far more nefarious is going on.
Something is going on, of course, and whatever you think it is, it’s not. But part of the fun is in watching Ria and her friends hatch plans to torpedo Lena’s impending marriage, escalating the situation until things get far, far out of hand.
There’s a fine line between too silly and just silly enough, and the movie gleefully leaps back and forth across that line. I laughed out loud plenty of times, and other times I just felt a little confused. In particular, there are scenes of battles between Ria and various foes, sort of in the style of Scott Pilgrim, that are bizarrely violent and have little lasting impact. And some of the dialogue is a little overly eager—Ria’s friends are trying way too hard, especially early on.
But dang it, this movie’s got spunk. The director, Nida Manzoor, is the creator of the TV series We Are Lady Parts, about a Muslim punk band, and she makes her feature debut here by injecting the movie with a ton of life and joy, and it’s not hard to look past the bits that don’t work. Everyone’s clearly having a whole lot of fun. We might as well, too.
Polite Society is in theaters April 28th.
