Sniff movie review: Adventures of a nosey parker

This happened for real. Unlocking the door and stepping in to my home after viewing Sniff, I was struck by a strange stink that eventually turned out to be a bowl of salad gone rancid. This coincidence aside, the move from Delhi to Mumbai, for me, has come with some olfactory issues attached — that smell of moisture seeping into the walls during the monsoons, the overpowering whiff of fish on the Harbour Line, the unmistakable odour of the sea. Having an extended family that prides itself for the nose(s) —not the shape but the smelling capacity — that regularly plays games like ‘guess what’s cooking in the neighbour’s kitchen by the whiff’, whose members can trace out a dead lizard in the car engine by the stench from the AC vent, I could identify rather closely with the Gill family’s preoccupation with naak (nose) as “kul ki poonji” (family treasure) in Sniff.

Cinema is largely a celebration of sights and sounds. However, Gupte, harnesses both to evoke the joy of smells, largely through food — the masalas, pickles, samosas, the melting butter on bebe ke aaloo ke paranthe, modaks, the assortment of tiffins in school. Would the food taste as good if it didn’t smell as great? You can almost smell the goodies off the screen and crave on — motichoor laddoo from Tiwari Sweets, nolen gurer sandesh from Sweet Bengal. As typically Mumbai as those society meetings are, Gupte has fun with the scenario – very indulgently! He frames his unwary child actors in as loving and affectionate close-ups as the food making one wonder if he is making a food film in the guise of a children’s film or vice versa.

Sniff is built on a trifle — a kid detective Sunny Gill (Khushmeet Gill) solving case(s) (there could be more in the series) through his olfactory powers. A film made for children, very young ones at that. So there is an overriding innocence, a lost innocence in fact, given how childhoods have mutated and matured these days. The one complaint I had with Gupte’s previous outing, Stanley Ka Dabba, was that, like so many of our children’s films, it came with a message attached. Sniff is not weighed down by that. It’s the reason why I am happy with it, but many a righteous adult might end up considering it simplistic and slight.

Simple it might be but simplistic it certainly is not. Gupte does have Sunny’s friend Adil talk of the smell of pain, sadness, danger and death but doesn’t dwell on it for long. There has to be fear but not too much to drive the kids away. A few pivotal characters might be objects of mirth here but in another story, meant for adults, could well be spun into more sinister, murkier stories. It is a matter of perspective after all, Gupte thinks like a child and keeps the darker shades deliberately away. His villain has the potential of Norman “Psycho” Bates but retains his essential humanity, vulnerability and possibility of redemption. Partially because he shares his director’s obsession with food.

A gentle, emotional layer lingers — the genuine problem of a child who can’t smell, can’t enjoy food as others do, doesn’t realise that he has stepped on poo, the helping hand of the friend resting on his shoulder, a touch of sympathy. There is heart-melting warmth in the lovely vignette of Sunny and Adil together by the tap in school, cleaning away the poo from his shoe. Yes, the product placements intrude — Pediasure, Tiwari Sweets, Sweet Bengal, Hercules. The story would have panned out better without the interval thrust in, the reason why, though things are set up wonderfully, the elaboration and resolution in the second half left me asking for more.

Gupte picks up unusual faces, a lot of them from real Mumbai neighbourhoods and schools. All the children, and their camaraderie is delightfully unrehearsed. Casting an unknown Putul Guha in the key role of Sunny’s neighbour Sapan Mukherjee works well. As do the hung-on-the-wall Divya Dutta and Varun Dhawan on the mobile screen.