Colourless celebration of the festive Holi

Karma Aur Holi
Cast: Sushmita Sen, Randeep Hooda, Suresh Oberoi, Rati Agnihotri
Director: Manish Gupta
Rating: **

This must have looked like a great ‘crossover’ idea on paper, but on screen, it’s an amateur effort without soul or substance. I think I was more fortunate than many of my fellow critics who watched the Hindi dubbed version.

This is a typical ensemble, event-based film. A couple, Meera (Sushmita Sen) and Dev (Randeep Hooda), hosts some friends at their suburban home over a weekend that coincides with Holi. Each one is dysfunctional in some way. As more and more alcohol is consumed and discretion is discarded, skeletons start tumbling out of their messy closets. And then all issues are miraculously resolved on Holi.

Had the writing had greater depth, the characters been less stereotypical and better fleshed out and the overall tone less chauvinistic, the film might have been a respectable debut for the director. The proceedings are further handicapped by a painful voiceover narration which sounds like a tele-shopping salesman.

Sushmita Sen is by far the most watchable and solid of the performers, followed by Suchitra Krishnamurthy as a bullied wife and Suresh Oberoi as a troubled husband. Of the international cast, Armin Amiri as Javed is easy on the eyes. Naomi Campbell should just be seen and not heard. Karma Aur Holi is neither colourful nor a celebration of life.