Pretty Lethal, 2026.

Directed by Vicky Jewson.
Starring Lana Condor, Iris Apatow, Millicent Simmonds, Maddie Ziegler, Avantika, Uma Thurman, Michael Culkin, Adam Boncz, Balázs Megyeri, Gary Cothenet, Krisztián Csákvári, Shahaub Roudbari, Miklós Béres, Gábor Nagypál, Julian Krenn, Tamás Szabó Sipos, Péter Végh, and Klára Spilák.

SYNOPSIS:

It follows a group of ballerinas as they try to escape from a remote inn after their bus breaks down on the way to a dance competition.

Forget that director Vicky Jewson and screenwriter Kate Freund’s ballerinas-vs-mobsters disposable streaming flick Pretty Lethal is failing at twirling by on the slimmest of narratives (it is a miracle that the running time even reaches 88 minutes); they can’t even settle on a consistent tone during the fight scenes. Within seconds, the film often goes from a grounded sense of danger in that these men cruelly mean business and can toss these nimble but agile women around like rag dolls, to something farcical that defies logic and physics with the dancing coming into play, often times with blades or other sharp objects going through similar rhythms.

There isn’t one of the usual reveals that we are watching characters with a secret past or hidden talents for violence, it’s just a movie that can’t decide if ballerina based attacks are no match for Hungarian mobsters (a silly concept I’m all for) or if this is a situation of real threat, especially considering one of the leaders of this establishment shoots their instructor point blank in the face 20 minutes into the proceedings.

That there isn’t a semblance of a plot beyond a dysfunctional dance troupe inadvertently finds themselves in trouble when their tour bus breaks down and receive help from shady individuals bringing them to their hangout spot who, as you already know from reading this, turn out to be mobsters, and must start working together if they’re going to survive, doesn’t help these jarring distractions in hand-to-hand battles that, if nothing else, contain the occasional bit of impressive manoeuvrability and physicality along with a clever stroke of violence (even that is frustratingly limited).

This might sound nitpicky to an outsider who hasn’t seen a single scene play out, but rest assured, the action doesn’t even make sense in terms of the characters. Played by an ensemble including Lana Condor, Maddie Ziegler, Avantika, Iris Apatow, and the only semi-interesting one of the bunch, A Quiet Place‘s deaf-mute revelation Millicent Simmonds, who is then disappointingly not given much of anything interesting to do (she heads to the bathroom before the mobsters get violent, for unclear reasons, where she meets a young man her age along the way and instantly becomes smitten as they goof around unaware of what’s happening around them), the ballerinas are personified as mean girls ditzy (none of these jokes land), cutesy, or rejecting the artform, yet can suddenly turn dancing into a superpower whether they are working together or not.

When it’s their turn to start taking punches and other blows back, it is excessively brutal for whatever this movie is going for, and it consistently feels as if these filmmakers have no idea what they want to do with the action they have conceptualized. Protagonists take a beating back all the time; that’s not the gripe here. It is done in a manner that muddies what type of action movie this is supposed to be. If, at one point, this was something darker and more of an attempt at a thriller before going through rewrites that ungracefully smoothed aspects over into action that takes too long to get nutty enough to work, that would explain a lot. Nothing can explain how flimsy and bare-bones the narrative is.

Regarding the villains, adjacent to the mobsters is Uma Thurman’s former dancer, Devora Kasimer, bad accent and all, who sees an opportunity to leverage the monsters’ screw-up to get out of a dicey situation of her own. Again, little of this matters or even makes sense, with Devora’s motives not coming into play until the final 15 minutes. At the very least, Pretty Lethal builds to an amusing and somewhat skillfully choreographed all-out brawl between the now-united ballerinas and the mobsters, set to a classical piece of music; it’s the type of sequence that functions more successfully as absurd, with more fitting flourishes of vulnerability and a sense of character through action. The rest is stuck somewhere in the middle, not ridiculous enough or too serious for its own good.

Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★

Robert Kojder

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=embed/playlist

After 50 years of being practically synonymous with New York City, “Saturday Night Live” has opened the door to London, with “Saturday Night Live UK,” following in the steps of “Law & Order UK” and possibly nothing else. Of all the cities in the world that might conceivably replicate the spirit of the NBC original, the British capital, with its urban dynamism, media concentration and 20,000 comedians, feels like the obvious, and perhaps only choice. (“Saturday Night Live Italia” might prove me wrong, if that day ever comes.) And, of course, we’ve been in a reciprocal comedy arrangement with Britain — or at least we have been nicking their ideas for shows — for years.

The show premiered in the U.K. this past Saturday on Sky One and NOW, and began streaming stateside Sunday on Peacock, with our own Tina Fey as the first guest host. (“It’s an absolute honor and kind of historic,” she said to studio audience. “Guys, I am the youngest person to ever host ‘SNL UK!’”)

As a “Saturday Night Live” star, writer and head writer; and the co-creator of “30 Rock” — her show about a sketch show set in the very same building as “SNL” — they couldn’t have appointed a better ambassador. Lorne Michaels doubtless has her on speed dial.

Here’s the short review: In the course of a single episode, “SNL UK” managed to feel very much like its parent show — which is to say, some of it worked well and some of it worked less well, but very little of it didn’t work at all. There were sketches that ran too long, or ended weakly, but were generally redeemed by a young(ish), confident 11-member cast that made the most of them. Some will already be recognizable to British viewers. Many have had notable, or anyway noticed, careers in stand-up; in the sort of stand-up that amounts to theater; in straight theater (including Shakespeare, naturally) and/or in television and film. Fey promised to “stay out of their way as much as possible,” but she came to play, and appeared in most every sketch.

The evening followed established protocol. Cold open. (Prime Minister Keir Starmer, played by George Fouracres, is afraid to tell President Trump, whom he regards as a sort of bad boyfriend, that he’ll send no more ships to the Strait of Hormuz: “I know how badly you want to start World War III, and that’s great. You absolutely do that but we can’t be part of it.”) Hammed Animashaun and Jack Shep accompanied Fouracres in the sketch and shared the glory of shouting, “Live from London, it’s ‘Saturday Night!’” They would continue to dominate the episode.

Next: Opening credits featuring the cast members out and about in the city. Monologue, with guest appearances from Nicola Coughlan, Michael Cera and Graham Norton. (The set is very much in the style of various American iterations over the years, clock included, with the band onstage.) Film bits and sketches. Musical guest. (Wet Leg, surly.) “Weekend Update.” More skits. Musical guest returns. More comedy. Whole cast onstage at the end, ready to party.

Among other things: A Shakespeare skit found the Bard (Fouracres again) returning to Stratford from London between plays, each time more affected, beginning with an earring and finishing with an electric scooter, sunglasses and a bag of ketamine. A Paddington Bear immersive experience, with an actual bear, turns bloody, recalling Dan Aykroyd’s 1978 classic Julia Child sketch. As a bra salesperson giving an ego boost to Fey‘s customer, Emma Sidi was funnier than the sketch she was in. (It did include a cameo by Regé-Jean Page, from “Bridgerton.”) In another, David Attenborough (Fouracres again, again), using “Jurassic Park” technology, hosts a “last supper” featuring great dead Britons including Winston Churchill, Isaac Newton, Agatha Christie (Fey), “Freddie Mercury, from Queen, Elizabeth the First, from being the Queen,” and Shep’s Princess Diana, pulling focus at Attenborough’s right shoulder; all they manage to discuss is how many starters to get for the table. It had the added bonus of getting the entire cast, and guest host, onstage.

The film bits were first-rate. (Not being live has its advantages.) One advertised an anti-aging cream — Undérage, with a soft “g” — “that works so well everyone will think your man is a nonce.” (That is, a pedophile.) “My skin looks so fresh,” says a happy customer, “my husband can’t go anywhere without being hunted by right-wing pedophile-catching militias.” “My husband lost his record deal and, some, but not all of his fans.” Another concerned a sort of command center where workers labored “to make the internet as bad as we can possibly get it.”

There are, to be sure, tonal differences to British and American comedy; just compare the respective versions of “The Office,” or “Ghosts,” or “Doc Martin” with its domestic remake, “Best Medicine”; the former tends to be darker, more cutting, more absurd. (A “Weekend Update” joke about the former Prince Andrew’s new home, Marsh Fair, “of course named after the nearby marsh where his body will be found.”) Despite that, and the old saw that Britain and America are two countries separated by a common language, the show translated well transatlantically. Apart from some local topical and cultural references, and an occasional unfamiliar word whose meaning was in any case obvious from context, and some swearing, most of it could have been played with few adjustments by the American cast.

“While we may not agree with everything America does,” Fouracres’ prime minister says at the end of the cold open, “we can still be civil and embrace their wonderful, unproblematic culture.” Back at you, buddy!

The season has been extended to eight episodes from the originally ordered six. (Riz Ahmed and Jamie Dornan are scheduled to host.) Why not 10?

Of course there are companies where you can rent a husband, a daughter, a wedding guest, a videogame partner, or just someone to clap for you at karaoke. Only in Japan could loneliness evolve into something this efficiently organised — it’s exactly the kind of thing us ‘gaijin’ describe as “so Japanese” while secretly wondering why no one else thought to formalise emotional outsourcing with this level of commitment. Werner Herzog took one look at this ecosystem in his 2019 quasi-documentary Family Romance, LLC, about actors hired to impersonate loved ones, and spiralled into metaphysical dread, convinced that if you stare at the performance long enough it might stare back and erase you. But Japanese filmmaker Hikari saw the opportunity for something warmer, even a little seductive, because she understood the one fatal flaw in any philosophical objection to this business model: Brendan Fraser. After all, who would say no to a day drifting through Tokyo with one of the world’s most kind faces?

Rental Family opens on Fraser’s Phillip Vandarploeg, an American actor who moved to Tokyo years earlier for a fleeting commercial success as a toothpaste mascot, and the residue of that minor fame lingers in the corners of his life, which places him in a professional and emotional limbo. Philip is a man who has learned how to occupy space in Tokyo without quite belonging to it, and Fraser plays him with a transparency that turns this condition into a plot engine as well as a liability, because every role he accepts within the film’s premise asks him to simulate intimacy while the film itself struggles to examine what that simulation costs him in return. 

Hikari stages this strange Japanese industry with a functional clarity, allowing Phillip’s entry into the titular agency as the “token white man” to unravel through a series of assignments that range from absurd to the ethically loaded. His first job as a mourner at a faux funeral establishes the tone, since the revelation that the deceased is alive frames grief as a performance, while also giving Phillip a mirror he does not fully confront. From there, the film moves through weddings, companionship gigs, and other small acts of emotional labour that position the service as a pragmatic response to loneliness in a society infamous for their inability to directly confront vulnerability.

A still from ‘Rental Family’
| Photo Credit:
Searchlight Pictures

Fraser’s performance anchors these scenarios with a carefully sustained openness and empathy, as Phillip approaches each assignment with the earnestness of someone who wants to do the job well without entirely understanding its implications, and this quality allows the film to build a pattern in which performance becomes indistinguishable from care. When Phillip agrees to pose as the estranged father of an 11-year-old girl named Mia, the narrative finds its most durable throughline, since the arrangement requires him to maintain a fiction over time, to earn the trust of a child who believes in his presence, and to navigate the expectations of a mother who treats the deception as a strategic necessity for her daughter’s future. The school admission framework gives the lie a clear objective, yet the film’s attention shifts toward the incremental growth of the relationship, as Phillip adopts the gestures of fatherhood with increasing ease while Shannon Mahina Gorman’s Mia recalibrates her sense of abandonment into a tentative attachment.

This progression unfolds alongside a second long-term assignment in which Phillip poses as a journalist interviewing an aging actor suffering from memory loss, and the parallel is not subtle, since both roles require him to validate another person’s sense of self through sustained attention. There is a metatextual undercurrent here, as Fraser shares the frame with a character confronting obsolescence, inviting us to fold his own career’s long detours and returns into the exchange. Akira Emoto plays Kikuo with a lifetime of performance settling into fragility, and the dynamic between him and Phillip introduces a generational echo that the film uses to expand its emotional field, even if it does not fully integrate the implications of that expansion into its broader structure. The cumulative effect of these storylines produces a steady accrual of sentiment that aligns with Hikari’s directorial instincts.

The film’s visual approach reinforces this orientation, as Takuro Ishizaka’s cinematography renders Tokyo in bright, even light that resists the nocturnal Citypop stylisations often associated with the city, and this choice situates Phillip’s experiences within a recognisable everyday environment rather than some exoticised backdrop. The surface then feels inviting and coherent, though it also contributes to the film’s tendency to smooth over the more difficult questions embedded in its premise, particularly those concerning consent, deception, and the long-term effects of manufactured relationships.

Hikari’s script acknowledges these tensions in passing, especially through the character of Mari Yamamoto’s Aiko, a co-worker whose assignments expose the harsher edges of the industry, yet the film does not pursue her perspective with the same persistence it grants Phillip, which creates an imbalance that narrows the scope of its inquiry. Takehiro Hira’s Shinji, who manages the agency with a mix of pragmatism and detachment, introduces a counterpoint that frames the work as a necessary service, though later revelations of his own reliance on rented relationships complicates that stance in ways the film sketches without fully developing. These elements only signal towards a more layered exploration of the system’s internal contradictions, but the narrative remains oriented toward Phillip’s personal journey, which it resolves through saccharine gestures of growth that feel emotionally loaded even when they leave broader questions intact.

A still from ‘Rental Family’
| Photo Credit:
Searchlight Pictures

Pop culture has decided to protect Brendan Fraser at all costs, and it is easy to see why, since his screen persona offers an unguarded emotional availability that feels almost out of step with the present moment. Even after the industry ceremonially welcomed him back with an Oscar for The Whale, what lingers is how the man still carries that faintly rumpled, open-hearted quality that made him impossible to dislike in the first place. There is a wistfulness to his face, a sense that every smile has travelled through something to get there, and a slight hesitation in his body language, as if checking that the other person is alright before proceeding, yet none of it curdles into self-pity or performance. His endless capacity to give is a rare instinct in an industry built on extraction, and it explains why even his most uneven projects tend to inherit a baseline of goodwill simply by having him at the centre of them.

Hikari has made a modest, carefully shaped drama that understands the appeal of its premise and the strengths of its charismatic lead. While it leaves certain complexities at the edges of its frame, the film sustains a steady engagement with the human desire to be seen, which gives its most effective moments a poignant, sentimental clarity that lingers on.

Rental Family is currently streaming on JioHotstar

Published – March 23, 2026 12:04 pm IST