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Polite Society centres around teenager Ria Khan (Priya Kansara), who dreams of stardom in the realm of martial arts, ultimately becoming a stuntwoman. Conversely, her sister, Lena (Ritu Arya – Red Notice, as well as BBC’s Doctors), is a semi-failed artist and doesn’t have much ambition or direction in her life beyond smoking an eating a whole chicken in the street.
Naturally, Ria’s friends laugh, but then when I was that age, I was convinced I could be a record producer. Later, I made a couple of daft tunes on Youtube, so technically, I achieved it!
However, for Ria, everyone – including mum Fatima (Shobu Kapoor, aka Gita Kapoor in Eastenders) – wants her to become a doctor, given her Pakistani culture and the way that everything is. At school, bully Kovacs (Shona Babayemi) just wants to beat her up.
But she has a diversion when amongst the culture of arranged marriages, Lena becomes engaged to smoothy Salim (Akshay Khanna – Chloe). So, together with her friends, Clara (Seraphina Beh – Quiz) and Alba (Ella Bruccoleri), Ria tries to get some dirt on the man because she thinks he’s not good enough for Lena and is forcing her to give up her dreams of being an artist, but is she right? Well, there was certainly an aspect amongst all that which I wasn’t expecting, but no spoilers here.
Overall, Polite Society is not laugh-out-loud, but the comedy is quite sharp at times and worth a watch, even if a lot of the time, it feels like the way to solve any issue in life is through the use of martial arts punch-ups. As such, it does get a bit silly and daft at times.
In my local Cineworld, Screen 11 – which this was shown in, is a bit quiet at times for the dialogue. It was the same with Renfield, the week before, but given how they can’t be bothered to sort out screen 6 and 7, this is small beer. However, on this occasion, the Universal Pictures logo was perfectly loud, so who can tell what’s going on here. Either way, I think they’re just letting it run down because Cineworld eventually go into bankruptcy.
Polite Society is in cinemas now, and is available to pre-order on DVD.
You can also buy the Paperback book and Hardback.
Detailed specs:
Cert: 
Running time: 103 minutes
Release date: April 28th 2023
Studio: Universal Pictures
Format: 2.39:1 (ProRes 4444(2.8K))
Cinema: Cineworld Didsbury
Rating: 6/10
Director: Nida Manzoor
Producers: Tim Bevan, Eric Fellner, Olivier Kaempfer, John Pocock
Screenplay: Nida Manzoor
Music: Tom Howe, Shez Manzoor
Cast:
Ria Khan: Priya Kansara
Lena Khan: Ritu Arya
Salim Shah: Akshay Khanna
Fatima: Shobu Kapoor
Clara: Seraphina Beh
Alba: Ella Bruccoleri
Edith: Sally Ann
Mrs. Nawaz: Renu Brindle
Mrs. Abbas: Rekha John-Cheriyan
Ms. Spence: Jenny Funnell
Herself: Eunice Huthart
Kovacs: Shona Babayemi
Raheela: Nimra Bucha
Mrs Iqbal: Sophie Aisling
Mrs. Ahmed: Su McLaughlin
Rafe: Jeff Mirza
Jezah: Tia Dutt
Sensei 1: Ryan Laccohee
Security Guard: Ulli Ackermann
Head Waiter: James McNicholas
Registrar: Tom Bonington
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.