Michael's Movie Grade: B+
A wonderfully bizarre action/comedy.
As you start watching this film you may think that this is just a charming movie about a teenage girl who dreams of becoming a stunt woman with just a bit of a weird sense of humor. If you are thinking this though you could not be more wrong and you will be completely unprepared for just what awaits you. I don't feel it is right to give any more specifics about this film's story because going in you shouldn't be aware of the directions this film is going to go in. I guarantee that if you don't know much about this movie, you definitely won't see the strange plot twists coming and that is the beauty here. Much of the humor from this movie comes from you don't know when it is going to be somewhat grounded in reality and when it is going to leave reality far behind it. This makes every over-the-top twist, big action sequence and pure slapstick scenes, so much funnier. I was surprised at just how much I laughed out loud at this movie. There are so many great comedic set pieces here and each one works very well. The scene in the gym especially had me cracking up. Yet the more reality grounded scenes are quite fun as well do to some great banter between our main characters, some of which is truly funny. To balance the over-the-top eccentricates with the more grounded character moments without this feeling like a mess of a film, is no easy feat. The fact that it is done so well is made all the more impressive by the fact that this is director and writer, Nida Manzoor's first feature film. She is not the only one making her feature film debut with this movie. Our main character is played by Priya Kansara, who is also making her feature film debut here. She is truly wonderful. She has a great comedic talent and gets the best out of every comedic moment she is given. Her delivery and performance plays a major role in why the comedy work. Yet she never lets her performance become a joke and instead makes the character always completely likable. Even when she does things that are not morally right, we still like this character because of the charm this young actress brings to the role.
This movie does have some problems though. The scenes that take place in the school for some reason mostly fall flat, neither being as funny or exciting as the rest of the film. Also despite the main character (as well as her sister) being very likable and relatable, many of the supporting characters are not as interesting. They are simplistic stereotyped characters that have little more than that to their personalities. These characters do get some really good laughs but they never seem real to us the way our main character does. There are also a few times that this movie can seem to drag a little. Luckily these times don't last too long and the majority of this movie is a lot of fun.
This movie is simply tons of fun and should delight anyone looking for something that is not afraid to get more than a little weird.
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