I was asked why I didn’t review this film. It just happened to not be on my radar after seeing it at Sundance. It is now in theaters, and I’ve decided to post a capsule that I had written during the Sundance Film Festival that, for some reason, ended up not being published. Here it is.
Nida Manzoor is known as the creator of the eccentric British show “We Are Lady Parts.” Her wild imagination isn’t exactly tamed in her feature debut, “Polite Society.” The Sundance-premiered film is a mashup of action and comedy that overflows with a tad too much ambition for its own good. This is a wild, multiple-genre exercise that follows high schooler Ria — she believes she must save her older sister Lena from an impending marriage to handsome, rich young doctor Salim. Ria has a hunch that her sister’s soon-to-be-husband has sinister plans, she decides to enlist the help of her friends, Clara and Alba, as they plan a wedding heist to save Lena. It’s a silly, fun and increasingly preposterous comedy that couldn’t care less about formula. Playing like an Edgar Wright movie mixed with Peele’s “Get Out”, Manzoor’s debut tackles adolescent fears with imagined-up action sequences and a dosage of strenuous socio-political relevance. Ria dreams of being a stuntwoman which leads to her imagination running rampant as reality and fiction collide in action scenes that, sadly, suck you out of the story. However, the energy ramps up a notch once the heist begins. The more this movie goes along, the more unpredictable it gets, and all the better for it. [B/B-]
It’s been seven years since Alma Har’el’s feature debut, “Honey Boy,” which was written by and starred Shia LaBeouf — she is now set to direct her next film, with a very talented cast.