Ohh My Dog Movie Review: ★★★☆☆ (3/5)
Ohh My Dog is a rare and genuinely heartwarming Hindi family film that works best when it trusts its four-legged heroes to carry the story — the street dogs at the centre of it have a resilience and personality that no amount of scripting can manufacture — and the combination of Pankaj Tripathi’s effortless warmth and a young lead with real instinct makes this one of the most genuinely kid-friendly theatrical experiences in recent memory. It overexplains itself in places and runs slightly longer than it needs to, but its heart is completely in the right place throughout.
Rating: ★★★☆☆ (3/5)
Director: Amit Rai
Release: August 7, 2026
Language: Hindi
Cast: Pankaj Tripathi, Maahi Rai, Rajesh Kumar, Pawan Malhotra, Geeta Aggarwal Sharma
Genre: Family Drama
There is something that has been quietly disappearing from Hindi cinema for years now. Not action, not romance, not spectacle — those are all in plentiful supply. What has become genuinely rare is the family film that a child can watch and actually understand, enjoy, and feel moved by.
The kind of film parents could take young children to without pre-screening it for appropriateness or fielding confused questions every ten minutes. Ohh My Dog is that kind of film, and just for existing in this space, it earns a level of goodwill before a single frame has played.
The story runs on two parallel tracks that gradually connect. In an Assam village, a boy named Apu, played by Maahi Rai, wakes up to find his beloved dog Momo missing. His mother takes him to the police station, where the complaint is initially met with indifference before one officer is finally moved enough to help. But Apu, blessed with the sharp instincts of a junior detective in the great Feluda tradition, does not wait for adults to act — he starts tracking Momo himself, with his teacher alongside him.
Simultaneously, somewhere in Bihar, a young construction worker has gone missing. His dog, a brindle street dog named Oscar — complete with a jaunty red kerchief that never once gets lost throughout the film — begins his own search, gathering an unlikely group of humans around him.
Chief among them is Pankaj Tripathi, playing a teacher who provides basic schooling to migrant workers far from their families. A reluctant, grizzled cop played by Pawan Malhotra eventually gets pulled into the search as well.
Pankaj Tripathi does what Pankaj Tripathi always does — makes the person next to him look better, makes every scene feel warmer, and makes dialogue sound like it was written specifically for him even when it clearly was not.
Pawan Malhotra brings a cranky, lived-in energy to his cop role that generates several of the film’s better comedic moments. Young Maahi Rai holds the screen with the natural, unself-conscious presence that child actors either have or do not — and he has it.
The real stars, though, are Oscar and Momo. Director Amit Rai — who made the genuinely excellent OMG 2 — clearly understands that the best thing you can do with dogs on screen is largely get out of their way.
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Oscar in particular has a physical presence and personality that no training can entirely manufacture. The scenes that follow these animals doing what they do are the film’s most purely enjoyable.
The film’s weaknesses are the expected ones. It overexplains its emotional beats, underscoring lessons that a sharper edit would have let audiences absorb without assistance.
A brief religious element feels inserted rather than organic. And at a certain point in the second half, the explanatory mode slows the momentum that the animal storylines build so naturally. But Ohh My Dog knows what it is and delivers it with genuine affection.
Ohh My Dog is now playing in cinemas.