Merry Christmas: A Gift Best Kept Unwrapped

Merry Christmas seemed to hold a lot of promise for a Sriram Raghavan movie, but it errs in a variety of compartments making for a below par film. One of the flaws was casting Katrina Kaif. Her limited range of emotions and sombre dialogue delivery do little to enhance the screenplay. On the other hand, Vijay Sethupathi is the polar opposite, bringing his A-game in terms of acting. He effectively nails the dialogues, despite hindi not being his mother tongue, which makes it all the more impressive. 

 

Merry Christmas devotes almost the entirety of its first half in building up a tense atmosphere, one of the rare components in which the movie succeeds. Although slow-paced, the initial half has an air of mystery surrounding it, keeping viewers intrigued with the hope that it all culminates later. The romance trope between the two protagonists seems slightly overdone, and it would have probably made sense to draw curtains on it a bit earlier. As a result of this, the first half comes to an end with almost none of the major plot wheels coming into motion, and all of the puzzle pieces are kept jumbled until the interval. 

 

The character development portion allotted to Vijay Sethupathi is entirely irrelevant and has zero contribution towards advancement of the plotline. That time could’ve instead gone into adding depth to the story and introducing more elements of suspense. This is because the movie lacks depth and is extremely restricted in its potential due to having very few characters, which is one of the prime reasons why the movie feels unconvincing to begin with. It comes off as a shallow ‘murder mystery’ which doesn’t feel like one due to insufficient room for twists and turns.

 

The mysterious atmosphere is carried on to the second half. This is overinvested into, as the film seems to be too afraid to amp up on its intensity, as a result of which the suspense fades into being sedate and borders on being boring. The movie is overly reliant on its climax to deliver the knockout punch, a move which doesn’t pay off adequately. The climax is a beautiful scene in itself, with the big reveal being unfurled amidst perfectly chosen background music. The scene is successful in generating a hard hitting impact if viewed in isolation. However, if viewed in the grand scheme of things, it doesn’t do justice to the entire two hour long buildup, as the seeds sown by it culminate into a flower which doesn’t bloom to perfection. The movie has a couple of songs, which, although unmemorable, seemed good in the moment. 

 

To conclude, Merry Christmas ends up being a Christmas tree with no gifts. In hindsight, it seems like a two and a half hour long drag that surrenders in its attempt to craft a perfect thriller and settles for mediocrity, leaving scant room for exploration when it comes to providing thrill to its viewers. Sriram Raghavan suffers from a massive drop in his ability to cook up cinematic excellence, and it becomes difficult to believe that this is the same person who directed Andhadhun. The film makers manage to create a mess instead of a masterpiece out of all the potential they had on their hands.  I would absolutely recommend skipping this movie, even if you have a lot of time on your hands. It is a gift best kept unwrapped.