Animal movie has gained widespread popularity and minted massive amounts at the box office, however, not without its share of detractors. Now, the makers of the venture have responded firmly to the harsh statement made by veteran lyricist Javed Akhtar. The official social media account of the film called out the hypocrisy of Akhtar and mentioned that the scenes that are being deemed controversial would have gained acceptance among the critics if they were performed by females instead of males.
It charged that if a writer of Javed Akhtar’s calibre cannot comprehend a lover’s treachery between the male and female protagonists then everything about his art is blatantly false and added, “Let love be free from the politics of gender. Let’s just call them lovers. Lover cheated and lied. Lover said lick my shoe. Period,” referring to the movie sequences.
Writer of your calibre cannot understand the betrayal of a lover (Between Zoya & Ranvijay) then all your art form is big FALSE ? & If a woman (betrayed and fooled by a man in the name of love) would have said "lick my shoe" then you guys would have celebrated it by calling it…
— Animal The Film (@AnimalTheFilm) January 7, 2024
Notably, Javed Akhtar stated that the economic success of movies featuring objectionable themes is a “dangerous” trend, seemingly aiming at Sandeep Reddy Vanga’s multilingual project Animal. He spoke out against the status of cinema at the start of this week at the 9th Ajanta Ellora International Film Festival in Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar. However, he never directly took the movie’s name.
The 78-year-old Javed Akhtar mentioned, “The image of a hero should be created with an awareness of what is right and how it should be. Today’s writers need to think because confusion has increased among them. The reason for this is that society is in confusion. Society does not decide what is right and what is wrong, but it is reflected in cinema. There was a time when the poor were good and the rich were bad. But today, we only have one thought in our head, ‘Kaun Banega Crorepati.’ So we can’t make the rich look bad now since we ourselves want to be rich.”
Akhtar added, “I believe it’s a testing time for the young filmmakers today as to what kind of characters they want to create that the society will applaud. For instance, if there’s a film in which a man asks a woman to lick his shoe or if a man says it’s okay to slap a woman, and if the film is a super duper hit, then that’s very dangerous,” discussing the volatile exchange between Ranbir Kapoor and Tripti Dimri’s characters in Animal.
Javed Akhtar noted, ‘Nowadays, I feel that more responsibility is on the audiences than filmmakers. The audiences have to decide what movies they like and what they don’t like. It is entirely up to the audience to decide what to reject. The ball is currently in the audience’s court. Even today, there are as many filmmakers making good movies. The fate of cinema depends on how long you stand with them.”
With around Rs 900 crore in global revenue, filmmaker Sandeep Reddy Vanga’s Animal, featuring Ranbir Kapoor, Anil Kapoor, Bobby Deol, Rashmika Mandanna and Tripti Dimri among others became one of the biggest Indian hits of 2023 despite criticism. There is a lot of excitement among fans for the OTT release of the film and rumours in the media say that Netflix will air it no later than end of this month.
