Little Thomas review: Cute moments, little depth in Rasika-Gulshan Devaiah's film

There is a scene in Little Thomas where Gulshan Devaiah’s character tries to place a figurine of a couple on top of a multi-tiered cake. The cake comes crashing down. He eventually realises that the figurine was too heavy. And there, in a nutshell, lies the problem with Kaushal Oza’s film. The story topples under the weight of its own cuteness, forgetting that an adorable child can only take you so far. You need a good story and a tight screenplay to keep the audience invested, too.Set in the 1990s Goa, Little Thomas follows seven-year-old Thomas (Hridansh Parekh), who desperately wants a baby brother. He believes that if his parents kiss (proper English film style), they might just give him the sibling he has been wishing for. Unfortunately, Jessie (Rasika Dugal) and Desmond (Gulshan Devaiah) are too busy fighting to oblige. With their marriage on shaky ground and their family bakery struggling, the couple have bigger problems than answering their son’s innocent questions.But Thomas isn’t one to give up easily. When his parents fail to explain where babies come from, he takes his investigation elsewhere, asking questions that leave the adults around him scrambling for answers.Anyone who has spent time around children knows that their questions can be equal parts hilarious and mortifying. Oza captures this rather beautifully. When Thomas asks about his origins, his father tells him he came from Malaysia because his T-shirt says ‘Made in Malaysia’. It is the sort of desperate explanation that might sound ridiculous on paper but feels wonderfully familiar in real life. Parents have all, at some point, resorted to an imaginative answer to escape an uncomfortable conversation with a curious child. These moments are the film’s biggest strength. They are funny, relatable and rooted in the wonderfully unpredictable logic of childhood. The 1990s setting adds to the charm, too. From Coca-Cola’s return and cold drinks becoming more accessible to refrigerators still being a luxury in many homes, the film recreates a time when even cooling charges could become a point of negotiation between shopkeepers and customers. The casual use of Goan expressions, including ‘kya karta hai’ and ‘hum nahi karega’, lends the setting a lived-in quality.Then there is Hridansh Parekh, an absolute find. At a time when conversations about the dearth of genuinely talented child actors are common, this young performer makes a compelling case for himself. His twinkling eyes, crooked, toothy smile and earnest curiosity win you over almost instantly. He brings a natural charm to Thomas, making his questions and his determination to fix his parents’ marriage endearing rather than irritating. You cannot help rooting for him. But there is only so much an adorable face can do when the screenplay begins to run out of steam. The film seems so enamoured of its young protagonist that it repeatedly returns to his cuteness, often at the cost of moving the story forward. The jokes land, the child charms, the adults react, and the cycle continues. What should have been a layered family drama remains frustratingly surface-level. Even his encounters with his little friends seem manufactured.The central idea is, in fact, an interesting one. Children often become the unwitting casualties of unhappy marriages, absorbing the tension between their parents without fully understanding it. Thomas’s belief that he can bring his family closer together through a kiss is both sweet and heartbreaking. Yet the film never quite digs deep enough into the emotional consequences of the conflict.The fights between Jessie and Desmond hint at the loneliness of a child growing up in a house where affection has been replaced by arguments, but the narrative rarely allows that discomfort to settle. The result is a film that entertains you in patches but never quite tightens its grip on your heart. The performances, thankfully, lend it some weight. Rasika Dugal seems to be a shapeshifter these days, slipping into the skin of wildly different characters with remarkable ease. As Jessie, she brings restrained frustration to a woman caught between keeping her family afloat and navigating a marriage that appears to be losing its warmth, even as she sacrifices her own dreams. Even when the writing leaves her character underexplored, Dugal makes her feel believable.Gulshan Devaiah is equally likeable as Desmond, an idealistic man whose dreams do not always align with the practical demands of family life. He brings warmth to the character without making him a caricature of the irresponsible husband. Together, Dugal and Devaiah make the strained relationship believable, even if the screenplay does not always give it the depth it deserves.Oza clearly understands the charm of seeing the adult world through a child’s eyes. The trouble is that the film relies too heavily on that charm when its real strength lies in the more complicated story underneath: how children try to make sense of unhappy parents, and how love, even when it exists, is not always enough to hold a family together.Little Thomas has a lovely premise, a promising young actor and some genuinely cute moments. But much like that multi-tiered cake, it struggles under the weight of its own embellishments.- Ends