Due to the way Prime Video lays out their virtual shelves, it's easy to miss what's available like the Amazon Original Pretty Lethal (not to be confused with 2015's Barely Lethal which I didn't review, but logged as a 3/10 Skip It), a slight-but-adequate action comedy about ballerinas in peril.
The girls in question are a LA-based troupe of stereotypes led by Bones (Maddie Ziegler, Dance Moms), a tough girl who clashes with spoiled princess, Princess (Lana Condor, To All The Boys I've Loved Before). Rounding out the group is Grace (Avantika, Mean Girls - the 2024 musical), Zoe (nepo baby Iris Apatow) and her deaf sister Chloe (Millicent Simmonds, A Quiet Place). How does a deaf girl know when to dance to the music? Shut up, bigot!
The group and their teacher, Thorna (Lydia Leonard, The Crown), travel to Budapest, Hungary, but on the way to the competition their bus breaks down. Fearing missing their date, they set off on foot, getting caught in the rain, but arriving at a castle-like structure, the Teremok Inn, where they take shelter in hopes of getting a cab. Once inside they discover it's a bar and gathering place for local mobsters (think: Temu Continental) run by Devora Kasimer (Uma Thurman, Kill Bill), a former ballerina herself. She suggests the girls change out of their wet clothes into their tutus because sure, why not?
Thorna witnesses Devora torturing someone and tries to gather the girls to get out of there, but is accosted by Pasha Marcovic (Tamás Szabó Sipos, no idea) who makes drunken advances. She knees him in the junk and walks away, but he responds to the rejection by shooting her in the head. (Ron Burgundy, "Boy, that escalated quickly." GIF goes here). Princess threatens to call the cops, but Devora has the quartet locked in the basement and destroys their phones and passports. If you're noticing I used the word for four people, that's because Chloe has met and started making out with Devora's youngest son, Artyom (Krisztián Csákvári, also no idea), because deaf girls, amirite?
Facing death, the dancers have to get over their interpersonal issues and commit to Sparkle Motion, and using makeshift weapons like razors in their toe shoes and scissors, begin their fight to escape captivity.
It's a hoary trope about girls/women fighting men twice their size, but the "ballet fu" fight choreography by action choreographers 87North (The Fall Guy, Bullet Train) accounts for this by having the girls mob their foes and using speed and agility to take them down. That 3/5ths of the girls have dance backgrounds also helps sell the premise. When the guys do get hold of the girls, nature exerts itself painfully.
Thurman has fun camping it up with an imaginary Eastern European accent and Ziegler and Condor are fine in their narrowly crafted roles.
While nothing special, Pretty Lethal is an adequately entertaining action snack which does well enough with its "Ballerina but with ballerinas who aren't assassins" premise. Just switch off your critical thinking portion of your brain first.
Score: 6/10. Catch it on Amazon Prime Video.
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