The Worst Film Since ’Cats’? Why Gurinder Chadha’s ‘Christmas Karma’ Sparked Critical Fury

The Daily Telegraph awarded “Christmas Karma” its second-ever zero-star review, with film critic Robbie Collin calling it “the worst film since Cats.” For Gurinder Chadha, the celebrated director behind “Bend It Like Beckham” and “Bride and Prejudice,” this brutal critical reception represents perhaps her most controversial film—not for its politics, which are deliberately provocative, but for an execution that critics across the board found deeply flawed despite acknowledging its sincere intentions.

A Bold Political Premise

According to reports from her January 2024 appearance in Parliament to discuss the British film industry, Chadha told MPs her upcoming film would have an Indian lead character, saying “My Scrooge is an Indian Tory who hates refugees.” When she told Prime Minister Rishi Sunak about the project, he reportedly said “Oh, don’t make me look bad,” to which she replied, “I don’t have to do that for you, Rishi.”

“Christmas Karma” is a 2025 British Christmas musical comedy-drama—a Bollywood-inspired adaptation of Charles Dickens’ 1843 novella A Christmas Carol, featuring an ensemble cast including Kunal Nayyar, Leo Suter, Charithra Chandran, Pixie Lott, Danny Dyer, Boy George, Hugh Bonneville, Billy Porter, and Eva Longoria.

As Screen Rant noted, Chadha gives the iconic miser one of his most interesting backstories in any Christmas Carol adaptation: a history informed not only by a lost love but the trauma of being expelled from Uganda during the regime of Idi Amin, and the nightmare of coming to the UK a British citizen, only to be racially abused.

Chadha has been creating beautifully crafted stories of brown lives in a Western world for decades, and this film leans into her personal life as a Ugandan-born Indian who later moved to the UK under difficult circumstances. The film touches on something truly inspiring by echoing the 1972 events in Uganda when Indians were expelled.

Writing in The Spectator, critic Nick Curtis observed that Chadha reframes A Christmas Carol around Mr. Eshaan Sood, played by Kunal Nayyar, a contemporary Scrooge modeled on a now-forgotten generation of Indian conservatives in British politics. Curtis noted the film folds racism, skinhead violence, border anxiety, British colonial fallout, and the Expulsion of Indians from Uganda into a festive musical.

Where Ambition Meets Execution

The critical consensus suggests a film with noble intentions but catastrophic execution. Various publications branded the film “the worst thing since Herod” and dismissed it as having “as much Yuletide spirit as a dead rat in the eggnog.”

The most persistent complaint centers on the film’s musical elements. The score features music from Gary Barlow, Shaznay Lewis and Nitin Sawhney, jumping between rap, pop balladry, and Bollywood orchestration, sometimes in the same scene, according to The Spectator. However, multiple critics noted severe technical problems with these sequences. User reviews consistently mentioned poor lip-syncing that undermined emotional moments.

Screen Rant observed that within the first 20 minutes, audiences are treated to a breakdancing Santa, a grime rap about the cost-of-living crisis, and—for unclear reasons—a video-game-esque CG version of an unrecognizable Hugh Bonneville.

The Ghosts and Cast

The prophetic ghosts represent what Screen Rant called hare-brained stunt casting: Eva Longoria as a Day-of-the-Dead-styled Ghost Of Christmas Past, Billy Porter as a soul singer, and Boy George. The Spectator noted that Boy George, playing the Ghost of Christmas Future, works because of his silhouette and theatrical stillness rather than vocal fireworks.

Curtis in The Spectator observed that Eva Longoria is one of the film’s odder choices: a Mexican Day of the Dead aesthetic intruding into a narrative otherwise grounded in British and Indian histories—her section isn’t poorly executed, but it feels imported from a different film entirely.

Kunal Nayyar, best known as Raj in The Big Bang Theory, commented on joining the film according to Deadline, saying to explore a beloved holiday tale through the eyes of an immigrant story much like his own is exactly the kind of movie that will resonate with so many searching for the meaning of home.

The Spectator’s Curtis concluded that Christmas Karma is uneven, bold and occasionally baffling, but if you’re willing to surrender to its maximalism, it’s far more enjoyable than the early dismissals suggest.

However, critics found his performance wanting. The Spectator’s Curtis noted that as Sood, Nayyar is the film’s biggest gamble and the place where “Christmas Karma” wobbles most—known for broad sitcom comedy, he plays the role with a single gear in each phase, unmodulated fury early on, unmodulated cheer after the transformation. One reviewer commented that Chadha’s Scrooge is a caricature, deliberately, but Nayyar never finds the layers Bill Murray discovered in the 1980s classic Scrooged.

The Political Message

As The Spectator put it, the political sharpness won’t please everyone—Chadha folds racism, skinhead violence, border anxiety, British colonial fallout, and the Expulsion of Indians from Uganda into a festive musical, and it’s deliberately provocative, but Dickens was political long before Chadha was.

The conscious casting of African American actors as Jesus and Santa Claus has been described as a deliberate yet powerful move. One critic noted that during these polarized political times, “Christmas Karma” even finds compassion for the wealthy elites by seeing the boys inside the men, the wound behind the wicked. However, the parody of Rishi Sunak and other Indian Tories would have landed more sharply a few years ago—today it feels like a political reference already fading from memory.

Budget and Vision

Screen Rant noted that the budget has clearly gone to the copious Christmas jumpers, with its touristy conception of London including copious establishing shots of Big Ben and Oxford Street, chocolate-box multicolored terraces, and the entirety of London gathering at Hyde Park’s Winter Wonderland for a knees-up.

Despite these constraints, observers noted that although it’s a film made for nickels and pennies, Chadha’s latest feature still has pure passion and joy in it. Critics acknowledged that the Gary Barlow songs are aggressively forgettable, but Leo Suter brings a grounded warmth to Bob Cratchit, Pixie Lott charms as Mary, and Hugh Bonneville makes a crisply effective Marley.

Defending the Film

Not everyone panned the film. HeyUGuys published a defense titled “In Defense of “Christmas Karma,” noting that The Telegraph gave it zero stars but admitted it’s made “with the best intentions by some lovely human beings,” asking critics to pick a lane.

The defense argued that a film made with genuine intention and heart, however flawed its execution, doesn’t deserve such vitriol, noting that the Uganda sequence showing Sood’s journey from privileged child to impoverished refugee to hardened businessman absolutely contains the essence of what makes Dickens’ miser work.

According to HeyUGuys, the Ghost of Christmas Past section is comfortably the best in the film in terms of visual style, storytelling and Nayyar’s performance, and it gets to the exact heart of Dickens.

The Business Strategy

In interviews reported by Deadline, Chadha admitted she saw making a Christmas movie as a “pension” because it has the potential to generate money every holiday season, saying “The reason I’m making a Christmas film is because I want it to be there every year.” She didn’t set it up with a streamer but with a British distributor, because if she sold it to a streamer she would have to sell the whole lot, but the way she’s done it gives her the possibility of earning from it every year.

The Verdict

The Spectator’s Curtis concluded that Christmas Karma is uneven, bold and occasionally baffling, but if you’re willing to surrender to its maximalism, it’s far more enjoyable than the early dismissals suggest. Another critic noted that Christmas Karma is not perfect and not subtle, but it’s spirited, messy, musical, and entirely sincere about giving Dickens a cultural remix—like any remix, you need to be open to the experiment.

HeyUGuys argued that the film’s biggest strength is its sincerity—Chadha wears her heart on her sleeve, and in an age of ironic detachment and algorithmically-generated content, that counts for something. The site concluded: Is Christmas Karma a great film? No. But it honors Dickens in all the ways that matter—it’s ambitious, messy, and deeply sincere, and it stretches its budget way further than it should conceivably go in the service of the season.

For viewers willing to embrace its chaotic energy and forgive its significant technical flaws, “Christmas Karma” offers a window into immigrant experiences rarely centered in Christmas narratives. For those expecting polish, coherence, or even competent lip-syncing, it may feel like finding coal in your stocking. The film’s legacy will likely depend less on critical consensus and more on whether audiences seeking diverse holiday representation can overlook its considerable shortcomings in service of its undeniably heartfelt message.

This story was aggregated by AI from several news reports and edited by American Kahani’s News Desk.