Pihu movie review: Manufacturing danger

Film: Pihu

Rating: 2/5

Hindi (U)

Cast: Myra Vishwakarma

Director: Vinod KapriPihu is designed to dislocate a vital organ — the heart, which is comfortably placed in one’s mouth through the runtime of 90 minutes. Barring this place swap, the movie hardly moves.

Director Vinod Kapri proclaims Pihu is every parent’s worst nightmare (make it “every ignorant parent”) and then happily strikes a deal with every gadget and object in the highrise apartment. So you have the iron box, geyser, gas stove, oven, fridge, water tap, sockets, floor cleaner, glass bottles and the balcony ganged up against a toddler, whose mother is motionless after popping pills and father is away on a work trip.

The father — a “best engineer” beaming from frames on the walls — also fetches the award for continuing a conversation, which elicits no response, several times over. No, the man doesn’t suspect anything amiss when his wife doesn’t respond after a night of heated argument, and all that he hears over phone is his two-year-old jabbering away.

The only relief is that the girl is all natural as she plays with strategically placed dangers in all the corners of her home. The countless cameras — one in the oven, one under the table, another on the fan — let her be. From one mess after another, the child’s trauma turns fodder for an exploitative lens. Even water flowing out of the apartment doesn’t evoke much response from the neighbours who dismiss it as the ways of the rich.

At the end, you care for the child, but not for the mean-spirited movie which puts her in harm’s way just to sell trauma.