Polite Society 

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• Courtesy Photo By Parisa Taghizadeh/Focus Features
• DON'T CROSS HER Priya Kansara stars as Ria Khan, a teenager who dreams of being a stuntwoman and who's determined to save her older sister from marrying into the wrong family, in Polite Society.

What's it rated? PG-13

When? 2023

Where's it showing? Streaming on Peacock or rentable at Redbox and on Amazon Prime

Writer-director Nida Manzoor (We Are Lady Parts) helms this action comedy about British-Pakistani teenager Ria Khan (Priya Kansara), who's determined to save her older sister, Lena (Ritu Arya), from an impending marriage she believes is into a corrupt family. The best way I can describe it is Bollywood meets martial art meets British snobbery films.

High schooler Ria is precocious with an overactive imagination. She dreams of becoming a stuntwoman and records and posts social media videos of herself doing fighting moves. Her besties, Clara (Seraphina Beh) and Alba (Ella Bruccoleri), willingly go along with Ria's outlandish schemes, drawn in by her relentless exuberance. Ria's true bestie, however, is her sister Lena, an art school dropout who's drifting through life, trying to discover a new passion, which she eventually finds in Salim Shah (Akshay Khanna), a geneticist and scion of a well-to-do family whose matriarch, Raheela (a delightfully devilish Nimra Bucha), has a conniving hidden agenda.

As Salim and Lena's wedding draws closer, Ria becomes desperate to prove the Shahs are evil, but as she resorts to crazier methods of stopping the marriage, she strains all her important relationships as the film hurdles towards its battle royale conclusion. It's a joyous hoot! (104 min.) Δ