Director: Manikya Raju

For once, a kiddie film that doesn’t make you cringe. This part live, part animated tale of Sankat Mochan Hanuman, the monkey god who always comes to the rescue of his ‘bhakts’, has the kind of verve mostly missing from children’s films in India.

Little Rameshwari (Ritika), struggling to come to terms with her new step mom, becomes the target of the black-hearted Kokoi (Sushmita).

In gallops Hanuman ji, in the guise of young lad Maruti (Erik), and saves her from the wicked old woman and her really bad cohorts—a loafer brother (Shabaaz) and a scary tantrik (Murli).

In fact, a big part of the charm of ‘Maruti Mera Dost’ is its array of ultra-colourful villains. Sushmita is a cruel witch, the servant is sly, and the tantrik, robed in black, gives you the creeps. The director gets the balance between the menace and the fun right, though, and we know that everything will be dandy in the end.

For good to win, evil has to have real conviction: the animated pug-uglies and hairy gargoyles bossed over by the towering three-headed monster (hugely inspired by the baddies from the ‘Harry Potter’ and ‘Lord Of The Ring’ series ) who wants to take over the world, are terrific. Animation in Indian cinema usually ends up looking silly or juvenile: here, the danger that the young heroine faces is real, and the conflict is strong and peppy.

The two young leads are sweet, if Bollywood-melodramatic (someone should have taught little Rameshwari to cry well, and quite often Maruti speaks in stilted Sanskritised Hindi, the bane of our mytho-animations). It’s also, like practically every film these days, much too long.

But the good stuff outweighs the bad, and finally, when Hanuman gets into the mother of all battles, sending the bad guys whirling out into space, you feel like cheering.