While there are good and bad things in Christmas Karma, one of my favourite things wasn't really to do with the film itself. I was most amused the the potential reaction to the film by red-faced "patriots" who might find their noses put out of joint as they started to moan about "bloody foreigners, coming over here, and repurposing our classic Dickensian Christmas tales." Considering the constant attempts to get everyone worked up over some (non-existent) war on Christmas, and considering the recent extra toxicity surrounding discussions on immigration, asylum seekers, and national identity, Christmas Karma feels almost deliciously well-timed.
You know the story, which means I can just go through the main players. Kunal Nayyar plays Eshaan Sood (uttering "Bakwaas!" as the Hindi/Urdu equivalent of "Bah, humbug!"). Leo Suter and Pixie Lott are Bob and Mary Cratchit, respectively, complete with a set of children that includes a Tiny Tim (Freddie Marshall-Ellis). Danny Dyer is a black cab driver who helps to bookend things, Eva Longoria is the Ghost Of Christmas Past, Billy Porter is the Ghost Of Christmas Present, and, ummmm, Boy George is the Karma Chamel . . . I mean . . . the Ghost Of Christmas Future. Hugh Bonneville is hard to recognise as Marley, Allan Corduner is Mr. Fezzywig, and Charithra Chandran is a lost love named Bea Fernandez.
Adapted from the source material and directed by Gurinder Chadha, Christmas Karma doesn't get off to the best start. It feels a bit clumsy, and may well make others cringe as I did. The songs aren't great, which is an extra stumbling block for a musical, despite the whole thing being worked on by Gary Barlow, Shaznay Lewis (also onscreen very briefly), and Nitin Sawhney, and there are some major weak spots in the casting of the supporting players. Things pick up once Sood is whisked away by the Ghost Of Christmas Past though, and the use of the familiar tale to explore the immigrant experience, as well as wealth disparity, allows for everything to feel like a very worthwhile wander back through this well-trodden path. Then it sadly gets stuck again when Boy George appears and just looks as if he's loitering around until enough people notice that he's sulking.
It's always clear to see what Chadha is aiming for, which makes it even more of a shame when a few of the sequences just don't work, either due to the cast, the staging of a musical number, or just the familiarity of certain moments working against it. While I don't remember any of the tunes right now, there is at least one decent number in the beginning, middle, and end of this. That helps, and it's interesting that it's the more uplifting and celebratory songs that work best, perhaps due to them requiring some more choreography and . . . fun.
It's a bit jarring to see Nayyar playing older than his actual age, and he is unsteady in the earliest scenes when he has to be miserly and mean without viewers seeing any of the background, but the performance really starts to work better once Sood is free of normal laws of space and time. Suter, Lott, and Marshall-Ellis aren't very good, I'm sorry to say, and that makes this particular incarnation of the Cratchit family a bit harder to care for than many others we've seen over the years. Longoria is fun, Porter brings some essential colour and joie de vivre to his role, and Dyer at least feels like a standard cheeky London cab driver. Chandran is very good in her role, aka the one who got away, and there are a lot of cast members with less screentime delivering very good work as they help to show a backstory that involves our lead being forcibly wrenched from his home in Uganda to start life anew here in Britain.
This isn't a new classic, compared to other Christmas movies and compared to other interpretations of A Christmas Carol, but it's a good attempt to mix the old and the new, and the way it reworks the backstory of the main character is admirable. I would rewatch it, but only if others had decided to hijack my TV for a couple of hours.
6/10
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