Merry Christmas: Kaif and Sethupathi Can’t Save This Thanda Thriller

Writer-director Sriram Raghavan’s Merry Christmas had everything going for it. The film has an excellent lead pair, a nostalgic, moody setting, a great background score, and a director who has, in the past, adapted dark revenge-murder mysteries and mounted them on the big screen as delightful, memorable suspense thrillers.

But some curses endure, like Raghavan’s two-hits-one-miss hex.

In 2012, after the nail-biting revenge saga Ek Hasina Thi (2004) and the breathless crime caper Johnny Gaddar (2007), Raghavan made Agent Vinod, a boring blur of stylish suiting-shirting and Kareena’s pouting.

Twelve years later, he has followed up his bloody action thriller Badlapur (2015) and the delightful Andhadhun (2018) with another dud.

Merry Christmas opens with an intriguing split screen—we see the hands of a woman and a man operating two separate mixer grinders. One is grinding pills, and the other is grinding gunpowder for idli-dosa.

Soon after that, we meet Maria (Katrina Kaif) and Albert (Vijay Sethupathi). 

On Christmas Eve, in what was once called Bombay, Maria is out with her little daughter Annie and a large teddy bear.

Albert has returned to an empty home after spending several years abroad. A garrulous neighbor (played by Tinnu Anand) is boring him and us to death as he hands Albert a bottle of homemade wine and some free ka gyaan.

Albert, naturally, sets out to roam the dizzy-with-festive-spirit streets solo. He goes to a restaurant where a lady is crooning and Maria is sitting with her daughter and the teddy. While Annie picks at her noodles, Maria is stood up by her date and Albert finds himself drawn to the mother-daughter.

They meet again that night, at a movie, and get talking.

We sense nice, slow-burn chemistry developing when Maria invites Albert over to her home which looks like a posh vintage store with warm lamps, cut glasses, velvet cushions, and printed wallpaper.

But something seems off with her, and we know very little about him.

Albert and Maria drink, dance, and talk about life as it was. He has a backstory about a woman he loves, and she shares the heaviness she carries from being with an abusive man. 

Despite the best efforts of pretty Kaif and the talented Mr. Sethupathi, the film’s screenplay and dialogue are so dull that it feels like they were being made to read a radio play.

Baaton-hi-baaton mein they decide to make origami swans and then, as per a made-up Japanese tradition, set them on fire to make their wishes come true (Japanese have a tradition of burning origami cranes that is linked to honoring Hiroshima victims).

But this is Bollywood and a cute moment is created between Maria and Albert with CGI-enhanced burning swans. Once that’s done, Maria suggests a walk, leaving her sleeping daughter alone in the house. It’s strange, but Albert goes along. 

They roam around what looks like Bandra and visit a graveyard to do god knows what.

This is a long sequence, and we are expected to just watch and admire Kaif-Sethupathi drift around to the catchy background score, doing nothing but khaoing footage. And so it goes, pretty much till the interval. 

I was so bored and exhausted after paying attention to this dull nothingness that I ordered a plate of chicken momos for breakfast. 

As I dipped momos in red chutney, Maria and Albert returned to her apartment but were shocked to see a dead body.

First Ronnie (Sanjay Kapoor), a stranger, and then a cop (Vinay Pathak) arrive in the apartment, and again a lot of time is wasted as we are made to watch the film’s two-stars go about doing something so boring that by the time the film’s reveal and twist finally comes, the plot had lost all tension and I was totally worn-out by boredom. 

It’s the beginning of a happy new year, and I had a lot of expectations from Merry Christmas. 

Apart from the fact that it’s a Sriram Raghavan film, Katrina Kaif, and Vijay Sethupathi’s pairing looked like a casting coup. I was excited to finally see Kaif do a bit of acting, and that too next to the great Vijay Sethupathi.

Based on acclaimed French crime writer Frédéric Dard’s story, Le monte-charge (The Freight Elevator), Merry Christmas’ tantalizing trailer seemed to suggest that the film’s script and screenplay — for which four people have taken credit—were solid.

Raghavan’s film is 141 minutes long. The length itself is not the issue. It’s the long stretches of time wasted doing nothing that is a problem in a film that’s supposed to be a thriller.

The original story is wicked, but the film’s screenplay is weak and loose. It should have either been pruned ruthlessly or some exciting scenes and interesting dialogue should have been injected into it. There is just one funny dlinein the film.

We are also shown a lot of things that eventually amount to nothing and there were some continuity issues as well: A missing letter box, a glass of red wine that changes color, and though I’m not absolutely certain, I think I spotted someone carrying a mobile phone.

But a lot of care, attention, and work has gone into creating a vintage world of Bombay of the Eighties. 

There’s a lot of memorabilia in the film—from those weighing machines at train stations that would break into a psychedelic fit whenever a coin was slipped into them to bulky, round-dial landline telephones, from a sizzler that arrives at a restaurant table to the song, Kai baar yun hi dekha hai (Rajnigandha). 

Raghavan & Co seem to have made Merry Christmas with the view that even if they don’t do much, just keeping Ms Kaif and Mr Sethupathi on the screen, along with all these bits and baubles, is enough.

To be fair, Merry Christmas’ two lead stars, along with Sanjay Kapoor, do all the heavy lifting.

Vijay Sethupathi is an excellent actor and he creates sweet emotional moments as easily as Sanjay Kapoor manages to make us cringe with his slimy-caterer act.

Katrina Kaif is Miss Sunshine and Rainbows. She lights up the screen with her presence, and she puts in her best acting effort here. But to be honest, Ms Kaif struggles to act and we, the audience, help her a lot. 

Just as we would help a little girl we adore perform well in front of guests by mouthing cues and clapping at her effort, we complete Ms. Kaif’s half-baked expressions and hammy attempts at emotions by imagining them in our heads. We fill in her blanks, and we really don’t mind because we know there’s only this much she can do. But from Sriram Raghavan, we expected more.