A film directed by the insane "Muppet Show" character Animal couldn't be more out of control than Sandeep Reddy Vanga's latest film of the same name. This occasional but tiresome hot mess gives 202 minutes of huffing and overkill for star Ranbir Kapoor as a tycoon's beloved son with major anger-management issues. Its combination of spectacular murder and a possibly psychotic hero is reminiscent of Brian De Palma's take on "Scarface." However, this writer-director's third picture is essentially an adaptation of his previous efforts, 2017's Telugu-language surprise success "Arjun Reddy" and its 2019 Hindi remake "Kabir Singh," with very similar core character dynamics. Instead of a great surgeon with a glut of food and limited impulse control, we have the problematic child of a business tycoon who also crashes through life like a bull in a china shop.
There's the issue of toxic masculinity, which Vanga's prior work was chastised for promoting. "Animal" is just too absurd to be taken seriously, but it does provide a stereotype of chest-thumping concept of masculinity. Ranbir, in the movie, defends everything from picking pointless battles to cheating on his wife on the basis of the innate "alpha" supremacy.
As lethal as his acts are, not to mention stressful for his loved ones, the film always believes he's in the right. After all, he is a lion! There's no pity for the zebras who must tiptoe around him. And it's difficult to know what to make of sequences like the one in which Vijay addresses his father's workers like a Dear Leader at a fascist rally — "Animal" continuously pushes toward self-parody while staying irony-free.
