Sandeep Reddy Vanga has a habit of desire for a life where he dictates terms even if it seems absurd to the outside world. His Kabir Singh was an example of his ego that he desires in an unmarried life. The movie Animal is a portrayal of his desired fantasy world post marriage. He never needed a script to pursue movie making. The movie, Kabir Singh, banked on a flawed script of an idiot who doesn’t want to know about his lady love and her whereabouts and starts living with the mindset of Devdas. I could have liked the movie despite showing a misogynist approach if the plot of the movie didn’t depend on the foolishness of the lead character. 

With his latest flick, Animal, Mr. Vanga takes up a notch and explores the idea of a male character where he has the freedom to do as he pleases. The first fifty minutes of the movie Animal gives you the feel of rewatching Kabir Singh and you might get an impression that you can somehow survive the movie. But, the next 154 minutes is nothing short of watching a B-grade Bollywood movie. Now, let’s explore how I came to that conclusion. There are four aspects in this movie. The first three aspects deal with Vanga’s desire of portraying a perfect father in terms of: “My father is a Superhero”, “My father is the greatest dad”, and “I can do anything for my father”. But, these are only the subplots. The main plot of the movie is written on the cheapness of Vanga’s imagination that explores boundaries of the narrative, “Sadly, it’s a man’s world”. The problem is not limited to diversion at this level. The movie then bifurcates itself into two levels of masculinity and how cheapness of one over another could satisfy a group of audience that Vanga tries to target.

At the first level, you feel that hardcore bloodbath could be the core of the movie to which we are almost used to and for that we thank Hollywood a great deal. But, the next level brings down the masculinity below the belt. The script and direction further explores the size of the male genitals and the cloth required to hold that precious gift. There’s a special focus and scene on the underpants and how someone should wear and talk about them in front of a large group. The difference is that Hollywood uses this as humor but Vanga makes a point that it’s a symbol of masculinity and is best suited with a picture of a tiger. This level further goes down and then gets segregated into pieces of portraying sexuality and gore.

To top that, the background score of the movie is absurd and foolishly lingers on the melodrama which the movie never goes into. Now, if you could somehow survive all this, the runtime of the movie makes sure that you’re left with ample headache and trauma. With all this, my intrinsic nature of loving the movies makes me like at least one aspect of this Animal saga that exists only during the credits scene where we finally meet Aziz. Before I wrap things up and get a paracetamol, I want to highlight that the character of Zoya (played by Tripti Dimri) was totally unnecessary and only foolishly prolonged the premise.