Film: Animal
Cast: Ranbir Kapoor (dual role), Anil Kapoor, Bobby Deol, Suersh Oberoi, Rashmika Mandanna, Tripti Dimri, Shakti Kapoor, Prem Chopra
Direction: Sandeep Reddy Vanga
One watches a Sandeep Reddy Vanga film at the risk of one’s own peace and sanity. ‘Animal’ could well have been Beast — and a monstrous one at that. The ugly, brazen, unpretentious celebration of violence is puke-worthy and nauseating. In one scene of the film, Zoya (Tripti Dimri) throws up after a bout of violence. For the entire three hours-plus duration, ‘Animal’ constantly challenges you to keep yourself away from the washbasin — now almost signature-tune of the filmmaker. We have the worst permutations of meaningless dollops of violence. After a while, films of Ravi Teja and Balakrishna look like comic strips. It takes a whole 45 minutes to present the ugly, hurting aspects of a Corleone family in the midst of the daily chaos. Juvenile and adolescent delinquents pushed for heroics and wealth as affirmation of power. Here, affection is an affliction and no relationship is hygienic. They are invariably spewed with gender bias, feudal orthodoxy, and juxtaposition to contemporary gloss.
Balbir Singh (Anil Kapoor) is the central player of a big business family. His dad Rajdhir Singh (Suresh Oberoi) is only good for family pics. His wife Jyoti Singh (Charu Shankar) is the proverbial doormat housewife whose lack of self-respect is assumed and often confused with maternal duties. The rich, dysfunctional family has three children — Ranvijay (Ranbir Kapoor), daughters Reet Singh (Saloni Batra) and Roop (Anshul Chauhan). As the story unfolds, you understand that Reet’s husband Varun Pratap (Siddant Karnick) is not only eyeing pa-in-law’s state but is also murdering people with the ease of adjusting fielders during the power play in a cricket match. Needless oldies of uncles and dadajis (Shakti Kapoor and Prem Chopra) contribute to the noise fury.
Ranvijay is the central ‘animal’ who, with the strong support of the director, is unapologetic, unevolved. Typically, the gun-wielding car-hopping son of a billionaire mouths shocking lines, talking of big pelvis to accommodate healthy babies and telling his wife, “You were at the bottom with nothing to do.” The 203-minute film unequivocally and unapologetically conceived in blood and huge tracts of irrelevance.
Every bout of violence initially seems to be the worst till the next one comes along. There are crass dialogues for innerwear and slapping. In Sandeep Reddy’s world, masculinity includes women hopping into bed as if they were sex toys and helplessly in love. One of them is required to lick the shoes of her lover.
The script is a complete misnomer of storytelling. It’s a wild, unhealthy, chronicling of bizarre acts of violence, shoot-outs and other fatal forms of destruction. They are contrived, and ugly beyond recollection. The fight in the hotel, for instance, makes terror attacks look like trial runs. Even the gruesome tobacco advertisement before the film shines in comparison. Ranvijay’s love affair with Geetanjali (Rashmika Mandanna) and his affair with Zoya (Tripti Dimri) are pathologically sexist.
Two hours and 20 minutes into the film when you get the feeling that you are the cusp of the third world war, in walks the added attrition villain, Abrar Haque (Bobby Deol). Does not take long for him to shout. He is said to be mute and, at one stage, Ranvijay can’t hear. Director’s sense of humour touches an all-time low where the mute person and a hearing impaired guy are engaged in a battle, leaving it to the near moronic viewer to watch it all. The wedding scenes of Abrar and his relationship with his multiple wives are abysmal in style and content.
It is indeed unfortunate that influences of society are willingly to endorse a misogynist, violent, blood-drenched script like ‘Animal’ The threat of a sequel and an invite to Animal Farm is impunity to say the least. This product of imagination could well be the product of a mind that has pathological challenges and requires psychiatric attention
Anil Kapoor and Ranbir Kapoor — two extremely talented actors and strong social influences — must ask themselves if they are justified in exercising their licence to choose, when they agreed to do ‘Animal.’ Both give the cinema some amazing cinematic moments and hold you on lest you run out of the theatre, tired of the dust and blood. The near libidinous attitude built around grotesque power statements is cringe-worthy
The film, to me, is an all-time low in human indulgence. The relentless violence is harmful, artistically boring, creatively destructive, abusive licence is not cinema even if it is a guaranteed ticket to the gold mine. - LRC
