Pihu: Starring Myra, Prerna Sharma, voices of Rahul Bagga and Hrishita Bhatt; Directed by Vinod Kapri; Rating: ****(4 stars).
If Macaulay Culkin was a little girl who was a far better actor than he, and if Home Alone was a tragic terrifying nervewracking exposition on a 2-year child left all alone in a house filled with electric gadgets and dangerous inclines and a dead parent, this is the film you would get.
Let’s be thankful for the new wave in Hindi cinema that has gripped the Bollywood script in 2018 like an obstinate fever. Pihu pushes the envelope so far you can’t see the stamp of any other film on it. On seeing the trailer I had compared Pihu to Chetan Anand’s Aakhri Khat.And to a large extent that parallel remains pertinent.|Pihu Movie Review
To simply watch a child fending for herself is the most heartbreaking ode to vulnerability on this side of Sadma. As Pihu prances, giggles, groans and finally weeps her way through the nightmarish emptiness of her well-appointed home, I kept wondering how the director would hold our attention for a full-length feature film with just a 2-year protagonist on screen… Or for that matter, how will he get the 2-year child to go through the motions of an imminent catastrophic crisis?
On both counts I am happy to say Pihu scores high points. Not only are we unconditionally riveted to little Pihu’s instinctive survival methods (don’t think Culkin, think Tom Hanks in Castaway) the little wonder-actress is astonishingly clued in to the way the camera works. (BUSINESS STANDARD OR BS)
In no time we surrender to Pihu’s distressful circumstance while she remains oblivious to it. At times her expressions of exasperation at the mess that karma has suddenly dealt her, are so profound I felt I was watching a seasoned actress rather than a child who doesn’t even know what the camera (or karma) is and yet Pihu, for all its disposition to overpower us with a one-character survival saga, is never short of breath…Read Full Story
