Movie Review: Christmas Karma

 It’s Christmas time and Eshaan Sood appears to be the only person in London who has not watched Love Actually and is therefore still stuck in Charles Dickens’ era. Gurinder Chadha has given Scrooge (Sood) an ethnic make­over, making him the child of Ugandan Indians who had to leave when Idi Amin called for the expulsion of those of Asian descent, caus­ing 80,000 of them to flee with little more than the clothes on their backs.

Oddly enough it leaves him with a lifelong hatred of refugees. Sood, played by The Big Bang Theory’s affable Kunal Nayyar, buried under a long beard and grey makeup, is visited by three ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Future, but refuses to buy into the yuletide cheer. He thinks he is immune to the world because of his wealth, and refuses to forgive and forget the Ugandan betrayal. As a filmmaker, the colonial experience has been central to Chadha’s work.

The film has a great cast though you don’t instantly recognise Eva Longoria, Boy George and Hugh Bonneville under their lay­ers of make-up. Chadha could have done a lot more with the idea but for now we will settle for Priyanka Chopra breathily singing ‘Last Christmas’ in Hindi and English.