Ria Khan (Priya Kansara, sparkling in her feature debut) likes to believe that she’s no ordinary British-Pakistani teenager. Her dreams, for instance, always seem outsized — she doesn’t just want to learn martial arts but rather perfect it so well that she can become a world-class professional stunt woman. When she’s not in class, she’s home practicing her moves and recording amateur stunt videos for her YouTube channel. Still, the truth is that Ria is not as good at kicking ass as she would like to be — and yet, she roams around radiating an all-consuming, supreme confidence in her own abilities. 
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If failure doesn’t seem to bother her, it’s only because Ria grew up watching her older sister Lena (Ritu Arya) eschew traditional gender roles and determinedly chase her artistic ambitions. Ria adores her older sister for teaching her how to dream, unknowingly instilling in her the importance of having one’s own identity. So when Lena suddenly drops out of art school, announces her decision to give up on her creative ambitions, and agrees to settle down with Salim (Akshay Khanna), the neighborhood-eligible bachelor, Ria naturally feels betrayed. One thing is for certain: there is no way she is going to let her older sister waste her potential or become a trophy wife. Although Ria can’t quite put her finger on it, she’s convinced that Salim and his controlling mother (a scene-stealing Nimra Bucha contorting her face in rewarding ways) are bad news for Lena and conjures up elaborately naive plans to stall the wedding. 
This precise language of sibling concern about domesticity posing a risk to their bond and creative dreams is at the heart of the wickedly funny and endlessly exuberant “Polite Society,” which marks the feature debut of British-Pakistani television creator Nida Manzoor (“We Are Lady Parts”). Divided into five chapters and bursting with the kind of cultural specificity that is often appropriated by mainstream Hollywood, “Polite Society” turns the idea of high-schoolers fighting the patriarchy into a pulpy, irresistible heist movie replete with visual wit, impressive martial arts, gripping social horror, and undiluted female rage.
There’s a comic book quality to how Manzoor constructs “Polite Society” as a coming-of-age comedy, mainly in how her punchy script imagines battle sequences as an outlet for Ria’s teenage angst. To that end, there’s a lot in “Polite Society” that directly recalls “Ms. Marvel,” another coming-of-age comedy about a Pakistani teenage girl. That’s not only because both outings feature Bucha as a villain (although Manzoor certainly utilizes her talents better) but also because both feel like a welcome counter to the stereotypical diasporic storytelling that tends to make caricatures out of people of color. 
Still, it’s to Manzoor’s credit that “Polite Society” feels like a way more accomplished effort than “Ms. Marvel,” both due to the film’s carefree tone and also because of Manzoor’s effortless ability to conjure up mood. Take, for instance, the homicidally-choreographed musical number that Ria performs at Lena’s wedding that serves both as a hilarious interlude to a high-stakes face-off and as a melodramatic warning. 
The scene becomes instantly winsome when you consider its context — the lyrics of “Maar Dala,” the song Ria dances to allude to a woman so consumed in love that she is ready to sacrifice her own life. That Ria is ready to do the same too — not for a lover but for her sister — subverts the idea that women need men to chart their own love stories. Equally impressive is Manzoor ingeniously refashioning a harmless instance of leg-waxing into a horror setpiece that takes a clear dig at regressive South Asian practices, including the blind obsession with arranged marriage and the tendency of equating a woman’s worth to her womb. 
But perhaps, the film’s crowning glory is Manzoor succeeding in complementing the film’s wild, riotous narrative detours (paying homage to everything from “Devdas,” “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” to “Ocean’s Twelve” and “Sixteen Candles”) with breathless, high-octane energy throughout its 104-minute-runtime. A large part of that is only possible because of the naturalism of Kansara and Arya’s turns — genuine without being overly sentimental — and their impeccable, lived-in chemistry. If there’s anything better than watching two young, brown women be thoroughly badass onscreen, then it’s the realization that films like “Polite Society” are a necessary reminder that feminine anxieties — both polite and impolite — deserve to be treated as compelling movie subjects. [A-]
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