Atom User Reviews for Polite Society
Stupid
Metacritic
It’s a delight that borrows from everything — westerns, musicals, heist capers, horror, Jane Austen and James Bond — to build its writer and director, Nida Manzoor, into a promising new thing: a first-time filmmaker impatient to evolve cultural representation from the last few years of self-conscious vitamins into crowd-pleasing candy.
Polite Society is a tale of smashing the patriarchy through martial arts and a bit of science fiction, featuring gorgeously shot scenes of action, comedy, and outright terror.
Playing in the stylish, piss-taking space of Gurinder Chadha and Edgar Wright, Manzoor’s feature debut attacks adolescent fears—failing to achieve your dreams, settling for less, fading from loved ones—with spin-kicks, fake mustaches and evil plots so absurdly sinister that even the most jaded, monosyllabic teens will have to crack a smile.