Why ‘Hot Mess Holiday’ is the desi holiday movie we didn’t know we’ve been waiting for
The Hindu
From Deepavali to diamond heists, Surina Jindal and Melanie Chandra chat about why the timing for Comedy Central’s ‘Hot Mess Holiday’ is perfect
We have sex, we drink, we curse like the sailors of yesteryear, and then some. But the Indian women we often saw in movies or series were always the result of cultures of perfection or exoticisation, rather than fully-formed, flawed human beings.
.
Slowly and surely, the real force of representation came in the comedy-drama films such as Lipstick Under My Burkha, Margarita With a Straw and Queen. But what of pure, slapstick comedy? That is Hot Mess Holiday as it captures the Indian diaspora woman of today in the bizarre context of ‘Deepavali in New York, a public break-up going viral, a diamond heist and Kal Penn being Kal Penn.’