From the first blow to the last, Polite Society is a charm offensive that simply doesn’t let up. Nida Manzoor’s feature directorial debut is an exuberant action-comedy that not only understands sibling relationships but lands just about every punch and punchline with impressive confidence and flow. It helps that the film is anchored by two irresistibly charismatic performances from Priya Kansara and Ritu Arya as sisters Ria and Lena, respectively.
The older of the two siblings, Lena, is a struggling artist who hides from the world behind a messy fringe, an oversized hoody, and a glare that could pierce a brick wall. Ria, on the other hand, is taking life head on: pursuing her dreams of becoming a world-renowned stunt woman with a mixture of youthful naïveté and ferocious ambition. When they’re on good terms, Ria and Lena are each other’s best friends and biggest cheerleaders. And when they come to blows later on, it leads to Polite Society’s most unflinchingly brutal beatdown.
It’s safe to say that neither of their daughters are exactly what the girls’ parents, Rafe (Jeff Mirza) and Fatima (Shobu Kapoor), had expected. Frankly, they would rather both of them abandoned their outlandish dreams and settled down with a reliable desk job or a nice husband. They’re undeniably close-minded, influenced by the tea-sipping social circle that Fatima longs to impress, and much of Polite Society, as written by Manzoor, is about this generational divide, drawing comedy from its lively clash between tradition and modernity.
The film, though, is also wise enough not to present the parents as straight-up ghouls. Their family dinners are warm and supportive, with Rafe at one point cheerfully congratulating Lena for remembering to shower that day. Yes, they would rather have Ria and Lena stick to the safe places which have already been mapped out for them. But Rafe and Fatima aren’t cold or controlling, just worried about their daughters. After all, the world that their daughters are walking into seems so much bigger than the one the parents thought they knew.
Polite Society’s main plot kicks into action when Lena falls for an eligible bachelor named Salim (Akshay Khanna) and appears ready to give up on her artistic ambitions and eccentric ways. This is, of course, completely unacceptable to Ria, who, along with her loyal friends Alba (Ella Bruccoleri) and Clara (Seraphina Beh), hatches a series of zany schemes in order to get the wedding called off. No matter how many fake mustaches or lotion-filled condoms it takes, they’re determined to save Lena from this particular Prince Charming.
But this side of Polite Society—a comedy of manners laced with social commentary—is only really half the equation. Throughout, Ria also finds herself throwing down with high school bullies, relatives, and even a squadron of surprisingly well-trained beauticians. Each battle is introduced with a title card in bold yellow lettering and an uptempo surge from the soundtrack as the rules of reality loosen, and the film transforms into a full-blown martial arts caper.
There’s a little bit of Kill Bill in the film’s DNA, but unlike many of the imitators that Quentin Tarantino’s film has spawned, Manzoor understands that you can’t get by on enthusiasm alone. Polite Society zips through its scenes and leaps between genres with tight efficiency, always creating a great sense of space that effectively raises the hit-rate of the fight sequences and gags you may think you’ve seen a hundred times before, like when a character says, “I’m not going and that’s final,” and a smash-cut delivers them straight to their destination.
The fleet-footed way that it moves between genres also allows Polite Society to pull of an almighty rope-a-dope with its third act. Just when you think you’ve more or less worked out where the borders of the film’s reality are and how much of the wilder stuff is really just Ria’s overactive imagination at work, Polite Society delivers a rousing, roundhouse kick of a finale that’s just so much more in every sense than you could possibly have expected.
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I wish it were so, then I would not feel that I had wasted my £5 on viewing this inept, badly-acted mess of a film this week. Sadly, Polite Society imitates far better films – like Four Weddings and a Funeral – and even equally terrible ones such as Get Out. Slow motion fight scenes are entertaining once; repeated, they bore, sucking the energy out of the action. Dismally wooden acting (I’m looking at you, Ms Kansara) and a paper-thin plot that stereotypes Pakistani culture and Pakistani women relegate this to the bin.