Pretty Lethal Has A Killer Premise, But Doesn’t Stick The Landing
Pretty Lethal has a killer premise, but the trailer is better than the movie itself. The film follows five ballerinas who find themselves stranded at a creepy roadside inn in Hungary when their bus breaks down on the way to a prestigious competition. Despite not getting along, the girls are forced to rely on their years of brutal training when a deadly situation unfolds around them.
I was excited for this one because the cast is stacked with young talent I love. But from the start, the characters feel more like caricatures than fully fleshed-out people. Maddie Ziegler plays Bones, the street-smart outsider who doesn’t come from the same wealthy background as her fellow dancers, including Lana Condor’s spoiled mean girl, Princess. Ziegler does the best she can with the material, but Condor doesn’t feel convincing in the role, possibly because we’re so used to seeing her as the nice girl.
The rest of the ensemble takes nearly 20 minutes into the film to even get dialogue. Then when they do, it’s not great. Even Avantika can’t make a line like “[This place is] against my decency” work. She plays Grace, a naive and deeply religious dancer who ends up on an accidental drug trip, while Iris Apatow’s Zoe mostly exists to interpret for her Deaf sister Chloe, played by Millicent Simmonds. Chloe eventually drifts off early in the film to flirt with a boy, leaving the remaining dancers to deal with the escalating danger.
The real trouble begins when the group gets tangled up with local mobsters and suddenly have to fight for their lives. There’s a lot of potential, especially with this cast and the addition of veteran Uma Thurman, but the script does them no favors. There are a few genuinely jaw-dropping moments, including a shocking scene with their ballet teacher that sets the entire story in motion, but the narrative doesn’t come together. Thurman’s character doesn’t even have real beef with the ballerinas, making the whole situation feel more like a case of wrong place, wrong time than a fully realized thriller.
There are flashes of something special in the cinematic action sequences as the girls tap into ballet-fu, but those moments are few and far between. Pretty Lethal either needed a tighter, more serious story or to lean into full-on campiness. It flirts with both ideas, but never goes far enough in either direction.
Pretty Lethal premiered March 13 at SXSW and hits Prime Video on March 25.
