Wednesday, August 30, 2017
Sniff
The Nose
Knows
It is difficult for a filmmaker making a movie
for children in India to compete with the technically superior products from
Hollywood. But Amole Gupte has been making unusual little films like Stanley Ka Dabba and Hawa Hawaai. Somehow the intention to
please the target audience and the relentless good cheer of his movies seem to
work.
What he lacks in budget he makes up with
imaginative subjects. His latest, Sniff, is about a little boy (Khushmeet Gill) who is born without a
sense of smell, which, for a family that manufactures pickles is worse than
blindness, as his grandmother (Surekha Sikri) says. (The opens with
mouthwatering shots of a pickle being made.)
In a sweet scene, his friend Adil teaches him
expressions that go with various good smells; the reaction to bad smells he
gets when he goes to class after stepping on dog poo.
Then, when the best doctors have given up on
Sunny' s nose, an accident involving chemicals in a derelict lab, gets him his
sense of smell back and so strong it is now that he can smell things two
kilometres away. This power gives him unique crime fighting abilities since he
can literally sniff out crime.
It so happens that there have been car thefts
in the vicinity and the colony kids decide they have to solve the crime even
though the fierce ACP Bhaswati (Sushmita Mukherjee) lives there. Her
relationship with her husband (Putul Guha), mocked by the neighbours for
being jobless, is delightfully loony.
Gupte did workshops with school kids so the
children are utterly natural; Sunny's friend Adil is a charmer. But more than
that he has worked with real people from a suburban housing society and they
all seem to be enjoying the experience. However, the film could have done
with a faster pace, and more magical moments.
Sunny, with his extra sensitive nose will
return, it says in the end, making the Sikh kid our first kiddie superhero.
Labels: Cinemaah
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