Entertainment - Media News Watch originally published at Entertainment - Media News Watch
PLOT:
A young woman (Priya Kansara) studying martial arts becomes convinced that something nefarious is afoot when her formally rebellious sister (Ritu Arya) agrees to a marriage arranged by her Pakistani family. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRFM7HQmkH0
Polite Society was previously reviewed at Sundance 2023. PLOT: A young woman (Priya Kansara) studying martial arts becomes convinced something nefarious is afoot when her formally rebellious sister (Ritu Arya) agrees to a marriage arranged by her Pakistani family.REVIEW:Polite Society is rare for Sundance these days – a crowd-pleasing action comedy. Everything At Once showed that there is a demand for different variations of the genre. Polite society
is a fun-filled actioner for all ages, featuring wire-fu and a whole bunch of fight scenes. Polite society features wire-fu, a lot of fight scenes, and is a fun actioner for everyone. Her heroine Priya Kansara’s Ria Khan comes from a family that is relatively open-minded. She is a devoted martial arts enthusiast who wants to be a stuntwoman. Her sister, also a martial art, is a rebellious dropout from an art school. All of this makes her agreement to an arranged wedding suspicious. The film does a great job of showing why the sister (played by Ritu Arya) would agree to this match. She is shown on several dates with her match, a handsome, rich doctor. In the first half of Polite Society Ria’s attempts to break up her relationship seem misguided, if not monstrous. The only red herring is the groom’s overbearing, Pakistani actress Nimra Buca, who wants to marry. The film almost fails here, as Manzoor makes Ria seem self-righteous and smug, only to reveal that her concerns are valid in the second half. Here is where
PoliteSociety detours into martial arts mayhem, with lots of flashy, fun fights, done more in the Scott Pilgrim mode than the HK-approved Everything Everywhere All At Once. The movie also has a lot of Bollywood, including a great musical number and some well-done costumes. Kansara in particular seems to be a rising star, and this is a great showcase for both her comedic skills and action chops. Some may complain that the fights in Polite society aren’t hard-hitting or elaborate enough. But it’s best to think of this film as a teen flick first, and everything else as second. I can see this film gaining a lot of popularity among young female martial artists, and a new generation of them being born because of the success of Cobra Ka
. Polite society feels a natural evolution of genre to include other genres. If this leads to a influx of coming of age martial arts movies, I’m all for it.
Entertainment - Media News Watch originally published at Entertainment - Media News Watch
