Animal Review & Roast

 

My situation when I watched the highest grossing, blockbuster chart bursting Indian movie of the year = ANIMAL. 🐔🐔🐔

I finally watched Animal. I knowingly put my leg in a landmine. For who? For y'all. I was unable to take the movie seriously at all. At least that was how I prepared myself before watching it.

They really used a lot of tomato chutney tho. "Self-reliant India." But chooses to live in the United States. This movie's genre isn't action. It's comedy.

Animal is nothing but a privileged, spoiled, self-sabotaging, egoistic brat with a short fuse. His wife Gitanjali is another idiot who dances to his tune. She slaps and fights but has a rubber stick for a spine.

However, the fact that this movie is the blockbuster of the year and Ranbir Kapoor getting a Filmfare award for Best Actor (Male) makes me a worrywart.

What kind of people are we living with? They so intensely crave for violence, misogyny, gender roles, senseless murders, religious strife, elite mindsets, absurd heroism, acceptance of men who cheat, and crime without legal consequences.    

The movie also has subtle Hindutva agenda connotations. It's designed to portray Islamic culture and Islamic women distastefully - note Abrar's wives conversation and his "ways" in the bedroom. I only expect this to escalate in Animal Park - Sandeep Vanga Reddy is certainly capitalizing on the growing Hindutva ideology like Rajamouli and North Indians are lapping all of it up. But be it in Hindutva or Islam, the women are treated the same - unequal to man and lowly. 

Gitanjali, who got an offer from Princeton University and is about to marry a guy who works in the US falls in love with Ranvijay when he lectures her about how women originally chose men = alpha males. So, she forgot all her educational pursuits, defies her family, and marries him. 

The alpha male's weird definitions of love - "My energy was interrupted coz Gitanjali tied a rakhi on my wrist and I got high fever. Gitanjali too must have gotten fever coz I got fever."

Ranvijay's obsession with pubic and body hair, male genitalia, and underwear. His dad is recuperating from gunshot wounds and instead of asking, "Dad, how are you?" he says, "I've never seen you without chest hair." He even knows which hand his dad uses to hold his penis when peeing.

Ranvijay's pride in his libido and how and where he displays made me go WTF. He brags about it at his doctors and asks an abstinent astrologer "You've never done it?"

Ranvijay seems unhinged. He says one thing and does another - especially the cheating and then says he had an affair for his dad. His poor dad becomes the scapegoat for his every wrongdoing. I never saw him spend time with his children - how about his role as a dad?

Punjabis are a highly respected lot - after hearing about their ferocious dignity in Abiyum Naanum and watching how they portrayed these people in Animal, I lost my shit.

Ranvijay asserts about how love marriage made him lose control over his wife. He pinpoints her small stature yet "big attitude." Then he advises his cousins not to lose control on their wives. Of course, this resonates with Indian men - which is why they like Animal so much.

Why unnecessarily bring up and belittle menstruation? Vijay chooses to get trashed and sustain bleeding - women don't have that choice. Like it or not, women bleed for more than 3 days in a month. Where the correlation? Where? Haiyaa...

Ranvijay tells Gitanjali not to remarry if he doesn't come back alive. What the fish, man... Vijay will die for his own unhealthy obsession with his dad and she should mourn him all her life? Above all, he cheated on her - "for his dad." Yeah, as though there is no other way to sleuth.

I was unable to control my laughter at Ranvijay's cousins' "mass factor." With huge beards and mustache, they shoot in the air when seeing their naked cousin walking around. I died at the climax fight scene - "He can't talk." "He can't hear." Sarithan. 

We've talked enough about the misogyny and absurdity in Animal. Let's look at its Hindutva and anti Islam agenda.

Swastik Steel. Ring a bell? Hindus might deny swastika's association with Nazism - there is such a scene in the movie too. But the support for Palestine has shifted to Israel. What is Israel doing - genocide of Palestinian Muslims - the growing divide between Hindus and Muslims in India. Make the connection.

Ranvijay and his family's enemies are his second cousins who converted to Islam. This places a further wedge to already boiling Hindu Muslim tension.