THE Dysfunctional family drama — a staple of American cinema, and usually featuring souls exposed and secrets bared over a Thanksgiving holiday — is transposed to an American-desi setting (during the eponymous festival) in Manish Gupta’s Karma Aur Holi. Instead of Americans flung far and wide across the country gathering at home, we have here a group of Indian-Americans gathering at a simulacrum of home, a brown haven in the midst of a white nation. It’s all very interesting — until you discover the film has been dubbed in Hindi, leaving you with the uncomfortable sense of watching 'Dil Chahta Hai' in Awadhi. Just what, exactly, is the logic here? You translate “spin the bottle” as “botal ghumao,” and instantly the interiors of India are supposed to flock to theatres for this elitist urban drama? But even in English, I doubt 'Karma Aur Holi' would have been any more engaging.
With a large cast (Randeep Hooda, Suresh Oberoi, Rati Agnihotri, Suchitra Krishnamoorthy, Deepal Shaw, Naomi Campbell), Gupta attempts to explore immigrant issues as varied as the sensitivity of the Muslim and the efforts of traditional parents to cope with a sexually curious teenager (the only brown boy in his school). But despite the hushed ominousness of Gupta’s staging — plodding scenes set to a plangent score — the material never rises above the superficial. It’s nice to see Sushmita Sen in a part that actually plays to her strengths. (She always appears a couple of sizes too big for Bollywood, but she fits right into this New York milieu.) But as she’s reduced to a gently clucking mother hen, it’s hard to keep your mind from straying to all the better things you could be doing during these couple of hours.