The film's greatest asset is its restraint. Oza, working from a screenplay that favours observation over incident, resists the urge to manufacture a Big Dramatic Arc. There's no villain, no third-act revelation, no swelling orchestral plea for your tears. Instead, we get accumulation: a series of small scenes that build a household, a street, a moment in time. When the film works, it works because you've been allowed to simply live alongside these people for a while.
Much of that livability comes from Devaiah and Dugal, two of the most reliably interesting actors working in Hindi cinema, both operating well below their usual intensity. Devaiah, so often cast as men on the verge of combustion, here plays a father whose frustrations are quiet and internalised - a man who loves his son and is occasionally irritated by him and feels guilty about the irritation. Dugal matches him beat for beat, finding the weariness and the stubborn affection in a woman holding a household together with limited resources and even more limited appreciation. Their scenes together have the comfortable, slightly bored rhythm of a real long marriage.
Hridansh Parekh, as Thomas, is a find - natural without being precocious, capable of holding the camera's attention without demanding it. The film's choice to shoot much of the action at his eye level pays off; we spend a lot of time looking up at adults, which is exactly right.
Where "Little Thomas" stumbles is in its pacing and its shape. The leisurely approach that gives the early scenes their texture begins to feel like drift by the second hour. Subplots - a neighbour, a schoolyard friendship, a business venture of the father's - are introduced with care and then resolved with a shrug. The comedy is gentle to a fault, rarely rising above a wry smile; the drama similarly keeps its voice down. There's a fine line between subtle and faint, and the film crosses it more than once.
Technically, it's accomplished and unshowy - handsome naturalistic photography, production design that evokes the period without winking at it, a soundtrack that knows when to stay quiet. The Goan setting is rendered with affection and without exoticism, which is rarer than it should be. But the film's TMDb rating sits at 0/10, which tells you only that not enough people have seen it yet to form a consensus - not a verdict on its quality. Audiences will have to make up their own minds.
