I originally thought Christmas With The Singhs was going to be a wacky “white guy learns about other cultures” movie. Kinda like what we had with Mistletoe & Menorahs back in 2019. Alas, it is not that type of movie. There was such potential and they wasted it.
Asha (Anuja Joshi) and Jake (Benjamin Hollingsworth) reconnected after graduating high school 18 years ago. After dating for a year, Jake proposes…without getting her father’s permission first. As they spend their first Christmas as an engaged couple together, can they meld their Christmas traditions together or will this tear them apart?
This really would have been a great way to highlight the differences between an Indian family Christmas and a white American family Christmas. Instead, what we get is Asha’s father, Samuel (Manoj Sood), rudely demanding that the couple do absolutely everything his family does while ignoring everything Jake’s family does. While I haven’t experienced it myself, I have heard that Asian families are rather strict about things. But this is insane. Thankfully, Asha’s mother, Nirmila (Nimet Kanji), is more understanding but that is probably because her family gave up their Hindu religion to join Samuel’s Catholic religion. She understands the sacrifice they made and how difficult it was to combine their families. Samuel is too set in his ways (or maybe selfish) to think about what would make his daughter happy.
I want to say the movie itself isn’t terrible. The acting and the script are pretty good. But it is really difficult to look past the fact that it is mostly Samuel stomping around whining about Asha ignoring her family when the couple spends most of their time WITH her family and actually ignoring his family. It all comes together in the end, of course. And I would love to maybe see a sequel where they truly highlight the things that each family does to make the season special to them. This just wasn’t it.
Rating: Samuel reading a story to children was really THE most important part of their tradition?
