You don’t have to be a dog lover to enjoy Amit Rai’s cleverly constructed canine quest for a missing loved one. As a matter of fact, you don’t have to be much of anything to absorb Rai’s gently persuasive take on humanism and companionship.
There are two parallel stories running together, scampering for space but never really colliding in their comparable concerns.
In Bihar, a dog named Oscar (played by Bruno) looks for his impoverished master, a young construction worker who is extracted from his rugged habitat by a kidney thief.
Elsewhere, in neighbouring Assam, a young computer prodigy Apu (played by director Amit Rai’s bright son Maahi Rai) tracks down his kidnapped canine brother Momo (Oscar) with the help of a kind Teacher Didi (Sulakhyana Baruah). The duo is partly from Satyajit Ray’s children’s books, and partly from Enid Blyton.
The setup could easily slip into gimmickry—you know, dog looks for daddy while boy looks for doggie—but it doesn’t, largely for the writer-director’s refusal to let his vision get ahead of the edifying idea of how humane a canine could be during a crisis. The two crises never become an occasion for Teri Meherbaniyan sort of stunts and melodrama.
Amit Rai slips in and out of his dual doggie dilemma with the comfort of knowing where he is going, even when the characters aren’t sure of their destination.
I did find the third act overcrowded and too much in a hurry to court a climax. A quieter, more reposeful tone, assumed in the first two acts, works far more effectively to draw out the increasingly important bonding between human beings and their canine counterparts.
The two canine heroes, especially Oscar (the other four-leggedhero is largely missing in action), are shown to be unerring in their loyalty, unflinching in their devotion, so much so that the overall finesse of the presentation could easily be undermined.
The loving care with which Rai packages his humane saga, never letting the human characters seem sketchy for the sake of adding heft to the four-legged heroes, is a pleasure to experience. Hungarian cinematographer Mate Harbal captures the crowded hustle and bustle of the streets of Patna and Guwahati (most of the narrative is outdoors) without a single patronizing shot.
Subhash Sahoo’s sound design, welding woofs with hurrahs, police sirens with conch shells, is a masterclass in atmospheric astuteness, while the background score (Mangesh Dhakde) desists from framing the drama in spoon-feeding road signs.
The human actors, no match to the canines, sportingly play along. Aptly, Amit Rai casts region-authentic actors. Pankaj Tripathi is his habitually serene self as a respected Bihari teacher helping the search party. Pawan Malhotra as a tight-assed Sikh cop crossing swords with the bright, techno-savvy Apu is a smile zone.
But the scenestealer is Rajesh Kumar as a brazenly two-faced cop enjoying every bit of his character’s sleaziness.
Ohh My Dog could have been less anxious to reach its climactic point. But its first two acts juxtaposing the dog-searches-for-master with the boy-seeks-missing-dog plotline, is well constructed. If you love dogs, don’t miss this. If you don’t, still don’t.
