Animal

If you squint, you can kind of see where Sandeep Venga's Animal is supposed to go. It's a character study about an unhinged man born into privilege but lacking in the most important qualities, obsessed with his father who never showed him the love he needed. He's drawn into a world of violence and crime, in a desperate attempt to impress him. That's an interesting concept; throw in some of the Successionesque business politics, and you could've had an incredible film. The movie certainly has the talented names - Ranbir Kapoor, Anil Kappor, Bobby Deol - to make it work.

Yet, Animal fails on basically every level. It feels like the creation of an annoying 14 year old Indian boy than a film, and can only be described as TOO MUCH. This 3 hour and 24 minutes feels like an eternity as we zip from scene to scene, moment to moment, without much time to breathe. Not to mention, the film just feels excessive and it's not entertaining. It's honestly an exhausting affair.

TOO MUCH brutality and gore. It's completely unnecessary, off putting, and difficult to watch. We're supposed to like our protagonist (more on him later), yet he's needlessly cruel and violent, like everyone at a certain point in this film. It feels really "off" tonally, and comes out of nowhere. The scene where Bobby Deol was introduced started off nicely, but then goes off the rails with the blood and gore, and it ruins it completely. Not to mention the unnecessary...sex scene. Yeah. More on THIS later too.

Ranbir Kapoor's Vijay is a psychopath, who is as mentioned before, cruel and violent, but unstable, rude, callous, condescending, misogynistic, and difficult to empathize with. We have to spend a bulk of the film with this man, and the movie is constantly asking us to sympathize and respect him, but he deserves none of it. I like films with "unlikable" protagonists, but a film has to give us a reason to connect with them from time to time. I don't want to hear anyone complain about Leo's Jordan Belfort ever again; a guy we know is terrible, but you can't help but like him. Vijay is not that.

The film is supposed to be about who is trying to kill Anil Kapoor's Papa (that's not his real name, but it might as well be, and to be fair, he's really good in this), and lead us into some corporate and maybe political intrigue. But the film wastes it with a paper thin, poorly told plot and villain's whose performers give it their all and are compelling via performance, but definitely terribly written. They're two dimensional and their motives feel rushed, and not to mention, the film can't help but be a bit Islamophobic as well. (There's subtext to these Modi era Bollywood movies).

But frankly, the worst thing about this movie is its celebration of toxic masculinity and misogyny. I'm no Bechdel Test wielding feminist, but my God, this movie really hates women. They're either doeish sex objects or lack any agency at all. There's a really dark and twisted attitude towards sex and relationships this movie portrays, glorifying domination, fear, and abuse, all whilst desperately trying to convince us the main couple have a happy and successful marriage. Vijay can't help but undermine and demean every other woman he sees, treating them as sexual objects, intimidating them, or insulting them. And what's disturbing is the movie seems to want to paint him as "the man men want to be, and the man women want to date."

There's legitimately a stretch of this film towards the end where I genuinely worried we'd see explicit violence against women, like some wife slapping or choking or worse, SA or the R word. I'm not joking. I saw this with three women. You can imagine how they felt.

Yeah, I'd maybe watch this high and laugh at with friends again, but for anyone else, PLEASE avoid this trashfire.