Animal Movie Review: — Mindless Movie- Awesome Ranbir
ANIMAL was expected to be a high-octane action mass film with an emotional father-son story underlying. However, upon completion, I realized…it’s definitely what I thought but the way it’s treated is something that many may not like or many may like. My take is somewhere in between but mostly towards the positive side.
I want to start with the screenplay. This is what plays the decider. The film moves in a nonlinear fashion, especially in the first half. The film heavily relies on conversations between characters and the tension that arises between them. Hence, anyone expecting an out-and-out mass film with action every five minutes or so is sure to get bored or disappointed. In fact, for me, too, many parts of the film felt slow.
Before the intermission, this movie managed to put me on the edge of my seat and experience some exhilarating action sequences and entrances. The base establishment of the storyline there also seemed to be good, setting the scene for what to expect next.
However, things quickly went down from there. After a really exciting half that made me not even check the time once, the second half did the exact opposite. From the introduction of the antagonist to the final fight between Ranbir Kapoor and Bobby Deol (as seen in the trailer) seemed too rushed and didn’t do justice to Bobby’s character, who at the end felt like some two-bit gangster who just happened to be rich and could afford a few henchmen.
My theory for that rushing is that the first half took way too much time going over little moments. The sexual scenes seemed to be a bit out of this world and quite extended (I am not a big fan of these as they don’t add anything significant, most of the time). However, the action sequences were timed well and were exciting to watch, and the score just uplifted the experience.
Ranbir’s character was delved into with a considerable amount of detail, with frequent cuts being made back and forth between his different phases of life. That’s where I spotted another problem — the lack of cohesion in the character sketches. There was just too much throwing around into different phases, without much valuable information provided by the character.
I believe that this ‘Father-Son’ bond could have been much better portrayed if certain moments owing to why the son loves his father were displayed instead of the viewers’ taking his word for it (which works but fails to connect at an emotional level).
Now, coming back to the characters, as we reached the end, there were still a lot of gaps left in my mind regarding each character except Ranbir’s, as others were just barely touched upon and not given much representation and background, but the biggest victim of this was Bobby Deol.
Also, after the second half, the score suddenly became average and I have to say, the sound mixing fell to a great level compared to the first half.
Then coming onto the claims made by the director he will show what violence looks like. Nothing like that happens at all, just basic, plain old violence that you see in action movies.
In the end, I would say that the biggest problem was the development of characters, and still maintaining a runtime of 3 hours and 21 minutes, which feels shockingly long after the intermission. This movie has its moments but doesn’t seem to do much in departments other than action. The romantic part seems outward, and we cannot forget the director’s staple, misogyny (not trying to sound like some protester, but unnecessarily portraying it doesn’t seem to save this movie and doesn’t make sense either).
Overall, the cinematography was good, songs were good but the direction, storytelling, and character development (especially in the case of Anil Kapoor and Bobby Deol) could have been much better.
This film is an all-Ranbir Kapoor show where he gives one of his career-best performances in a never-before-seen avatar of his. His voice has the proper intensity of rage. He nails the action sequences as well.
Anil Kapoor does a good job as well but I would say his screen presence is overshadowed by Ranbir and Rashmika. Rashmika is given too much screen space than required. I was heartbroken to see Vanga completely utilize Bobby Deol.
He doesn’t have any more sequence than was shown already in the trailer which deeply disappointed me. He enters the film late and leaves within probably 20 minutes of screen presence. Very dissatisfied here. Tripti Dimri has a very short role but is guaranteed a bigger role in the upcoming sequel. Songs are good but none as memorable as Kabir Singh's or many other better albums that were released this year.
The crazy post-credit sequence (which felt slightly inspired by Rolex in Vikram’s post-credit sequence) establishes the upcoming sequel “Animal Park…come visit soon”.
Overall, for me, this was a decent one-time-watch film!
