Pretty Lethal Movie Review: Pretty Awkward

Pretty Lethal struggles to balance the tongue-in-cheek absurdity of its premise with a tone that dances too often between serious and silly.

With a premise this ridiculous, the movie wasn’t shaping up to work particularly well as a serious thriller. Thankfully, Pretty Lethal seems to be aware of this. The film takes a fairly silly tone at multiple points, to the point where even the main cast of characters feel more like cartoon caricatures. One of them, Princess (Lana Condor, of To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before), is a stereotypical spoiled brat; another, Grace (Avantika, of Tarot), is a “not in my Christian Minecraft server” airhead. There’s a scene where Princess runs into a henchman, and instead of immediately running or fighting, she makes him let his guard down by rapid-talking about not being able to keep up with a reality TV show. Elements like these are silly, but they match the premise and help ease the audience in.

At least, that’s what they should have done. However, Pretty Lethal also doesn’t seem entirely committed to being as silly as it wants to be. I mentioned two of the main ballet troupe are practically Saturday morning cartoon characters. The remaining three, however, are down to earth in both personality and quirks, and their performances are also pretty normal. Because of this, we have a main cast that is split between silly and grounded, causing a tonal clash that is quite distracting. The actors do a good job with their respective characters, but their performances constantly clash and bring down the others.

This dissonance extends to the entirety of Pretty Lethal. Devorah has a slight hammy edge that Uma Thurman portrays well, but then tries to sell a serious tragic backstory towards the ending that feels stuffed in. Despite the movie taking place in an inn owned by a former ballerina, most of the setting doesn’t reflect that, opting for more generic basements and rooms as the battlegrounds. The action sometimes has the characters fight using ballet moves which are fun to look at, but the next moment they’ll be engaging in more of a regular brutal scuffle.

What I look for in a film, regardless of its genre or tone, is commitment. You can go as silly or serious as you want, but in order to get me immersed in the story, you need to stick to a direction and not stray from it. Otherwise, the dysfunction hurts both sides of the film; the silly moments feel shallow and out of place because of the serious moments, and the serious moments feel dull, bringing down the energy of the silly ones.

In the climax, there is a scene where the troupe faces off against a bulk of the gang while dancing in formation and with Nutcracker playing in the background. That was ludicrous, but also fun to watch. Had Pretty Lethal stuck to that tone and gone full throttle, I think we would have had a fun campy action thriller on our hands. As it is, the awkward dancing between tones results in a pretty lethal-gic movie.

Pretty Lethal will be available to stream globally on Prime Video on March 25, 2026.