Half Pants Full Pants will instantly warm your heart, Divya Nair tells us.
No matter how old we get or where we land up in life, memories of our childhood instantly bring a smile on our faces.
To some of us who were born in the 1980s, when refrigerators and television sets were a luxury, we spent hours playing in the sun or whatever open space was available and lost track of time chatting with friends or engrossed in borrowed story books.
Amazon Prime Video's latest Web series Half Pants Full Pants, based on a book by the same name by Anand Suspi, transports us back in time to those carefree days when childhood was all about innocence and curiosity and less about being the next Mark Zuckerberg.
The central character, Anand Subbarao aka Dabba (brought to life on screen by Ashwanth Ashokkumar) is the youngest son of a 'simple, hardworking' railway guard Subbarao (Ashish Vidyarthi) and Sonali Kulkarni.
In each episode, we are introduced to different situations in Anand's daily life and his inimitable ways of dealing with it. From bunking school to make a magnet out of 10 paise coins to betting with his friends so he can save Rs 15 to buy a Mohammed Rafi cassette for his mom on her birthday, Anand surprises us with his unique talent of getting into trouble and then solving it in his own way.
Although his intentions are always almost right, he ends up disappointing either his friends or parents, one way or the other.
Once when his father repeatedly turns down his requests to learn karate and drums, he even ends up leaving his home to join an orchestra band.
What makes Anand's story of misadventures so interesting is the fact that he is optimistic and a dreamer, who doesn't give up so easily.
In the end, when the young boy decides to do something to redeem his image and respect for the sake of his parents, especially his father, we get to see a completely different side to this naughty, but adorable fourth grader.
Half Pants Full Pants starts on a slow pace, but picks up after the first few episodes when you get to know the characters a little better.
The eight-episode series is a nostalgic ode to the decade when we wrote letters to pen pals with Reynolds ball point pens, used a slingshot to aim at fruits and didn't have Google to verify everything our friends or parents told us.
Suspi's story-telling brushes through a decade of nostalgia that some of us and our parents, maybe even grandparents, grew up in without taking a moral stand.
The characters are effortless, lively and lovable.
At the end of it, you fall in love with Anand, his bunch of crazy and cute friends and the mini world around them.
Half Pants Full Pants is a refreshing, memorable, light-hearted series that will instantly warm your heart.
Half Pants Full Pants streams on Amazon Prime Video.
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