by Cain Noble-Davies
Worth: $10.50
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Kunal Nayyar, Hugh Bonneville, Leo Suter, Danny Dyer, Boy George, Pixie Lott, Billy Porter, Eva Longoria, Charithra Chandran, Shaznay Lewis
Intro:
Solid intentions, some decent messaging, and a couple of admittedly well-earned tearjerkers, aren’t able to rise up out of the pile of bewildering casting decisions, soulless presentation, and a stale and soulless soundtrack.
After landing a terrific jukebox musical with Blinded by the Light back in 2019, writer/director Gurinder Chadha has now gone for a more traditional musical, touted as a Bollywood reimagining of the classic Christmas Carol.
But that’s not really what we get.
Whether one’s introduction to this is through the film’s trailer, or in the film proper with a badly auto-tuned Danny Dyer kicking off the title song, the term ‘Bollywood’ is about as far from the minds of anyone listening as it is possible to get. Hell, there’s only one bhangra song in the entire film, and it only shows up 80 minutes in, then gets a reprise for the finale. Otherwise, it’s mainly that particular brand of sappy sentimental ‘holiday music’ that sounds like Reject Shop wallpaper, an Americanised gospel number, and a rap song that isn’t even grime to have it make sense with the setting (as much as it is kind of fun to see MC Lady Leshurr in a film like this). The only consistent Bollywood texture here is that all the singing is overdubbed, which only serves to draw out the artificial blandness, even for the better numbers like the highly-spirited ‘Rise Up’.
The issues with presentation just keep growing from there, from a Dia de los Muertos-ified Ghost of Christmas Past played by Eva Longoria, to depicting Idi Amin’s expulsion of Indians from Uganda, and while Longoria singing over this would’ve been odd enough, it’s actually Boy George as the Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come who does the musical numbers for these flashbacks. It must have been more important to get her in seasonal makeup than having this musical fit in any way with the region being highlighted. This is without getting into the “Success isn’t built on looking backwards, but happiness is” exchange between her and Kunal Nayyar as the resident Scrooge Mr. Sood, which is not only plainly inaccurate but it doesn’t even fit with the film’s own logic.
Despite the overwhelming beigeness, there’s still emotional oomph to the story. It reframes Scrooge as a self-hating immigrant, someone who made it in another country but fails to show empathy for those trying to do the same. Nayyar’s performance hits all the right notes for a Scrooge pastiche, the continual message of moving past one’s pain rather than letting it define the self fits with both the original text and its retooling here, and when it gets to Tiny Tim (here played by Freddie Marshall-Ellis), it gets about as heartbreaking as any other rendition of the tale.
What this all equals up to is a film that is much in-line with Chadha’s previous work looking at British-Desi perspectives and makes some solid points concerning immigration scaremongering and Christmas in the more secular Dickensian tradition, but its best moments are in spite of the musical framing and festive setting, not because of them. The sentiments still work, but not as carried by eye-rollingly samey Yuletide presentation that robs the specific cultural narrative of its urgency, not to mention how rote its supposed reworking of A Christmas Carol turns out. There’s a foundation for a properly good movie here; it just needed Gary Barlow to stay the hell away from it.
Christmas Karma is just a lot of Noel noise. Solid intentions, some decent messaging, and a couple of admittedly well-earned tearjerkers, aren’t able to rise up out of the pile of bewildering casting decisions, soulless presentation, and a stale and soulless soundtrack. Not since Kay Cannon’s Cinderella has there been such a sharp drop into disappointment going from a writer/director’s previous pedigree to their newest movie musical, and for those actually looking for a modern musical based on A Christmas Carol that does interesting things with the text, just go back and watch Sean Anders’ Spirited.
