Opening the film by cross-cutting between the impetuous Ria and the defeated Lena, Manzoor quickly establishes the extent to which these sisters remain each other’s biggest cheerleaders. They’ve already let one daughter, Ria’s elder sister Lena (Ritu Arya), attend art school and Lena’s subsequent decision to drop out and move back home in a funk is all the proof they need that parents know best. Ria dreams of becoming a stuntwoman, much to the chagrin of her well-meaning mum and dad (Shobu Kapoor and Jeff Mirza), who want her to put her expensive private school education to use pursuing a more respectable career. This is Ria Khan (Priya Kansara), a mildly rebellious rich kid with her own martial arts YouTube channel. If the resulting film is a somewhat lumpy concoction, held together by scrappy charm, sugary sentimentality and soupçon of Cliff Notes-style genre deconstruction, in its best moments it also feels like an admirable attempt by Manzoor (who broke through with the hit Channel 4 sitcom We Are Lady Parts) to sincerely reflect the heightened, sometimes senseless sensibilities of its 16-year-old protagonist.

And that’s before we even get to the mid-point twist, which plays like a light-hearted riff on Jordan Peele’s Get Out, while also spoofing older classics like Invasion of the Body Snatchers and The Stepford Wives. A little bit Jane Austen, a little bit Bollywood, a little bit Ocean’s Eleven and a little bit St Trinian’s, it also cribs some of the video game aesthetics of Wright’s own Scott Pilgrim vs the World, and pays extensive (albeit it blood-free) tribute to the kung fu fury of the Kill Bill movies, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and The Matrix franchise.

A martial arts-fuelled coming-of-age comedy about a British Pakistani teenager trying to save her sister from her impending nuptials, writer/director Nida Manzoor’s debut film Polite Society operates in the same overstuffed genre-mash-up register as much of Edgar Wright’s output.

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