Keen though I always am to indulge any and every new riff on Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, and keen also to hear from Bend It Like Beckham director Gurinder Chadha, this cynically Christmassy movie is leaden, unconvincingly acted and about as welcome as a dead rat in the eggnog. It’s the worst Christmas film since last year’s Red One, in which Dwayne Johnson played the head of security for Santa Claus and more or less had us all rooting for anyone who could beat up Father Christmas.
In this one, Big Bang Theory star Kunal Nayyar lifelessly and joylessly plays a Scrooge variant called Mr Sood, part of the Ugandan south Asian community expelled by Idi Amin in his childhood, and embittered by early poverty. An early romance soured because of his obsession with money, and he has become a grasping and unpleasant old guy in London (cue stock footage of the London skyline) in the rather quaintly imagined business of moneylending, with his now dead partner Jacob Marley, played by Hugh Bonneville. But after petulant displays of boorish meanness with his nephew, employees and the cheerful Cockney Christmas-jumper-wearing cabbie played by Danny Dyer (surely Mr Sood knows that Ubers are cheaper?), he is visited by Marley’s ghost and then the spirits of Christmas past, present and future (played by Eva Longoria, Billy Porter and Boy George).
The very worst moment comes when we get to see Bob Cratchit in his humble abode with his family, including the heartbreakingly but discreetly disabled Tiny Tim. Where is this wretched hovel? We must surely brace ourselves for some brutal poverty. Well, Bob’s bijou house seems to be in the attractively multicoloured streets of Notting Hill. Wow. If Cratchit needs to raise some cash he could sell that and have enough for a chateau in the south of France. Of course, he could be renting.
It’s only November and this film has given me an overload of Yuletide nausea. If you’re looking for a twist on A Christmas Carol, Kermit, Miss Piggy and Michael Caine’s version is readily available.
