Ram Gopal Varma says he didn’t connect with father-son story, shoe-licking scene in Animal: ‘Was fed up of Anil Kapoor’

Ram Gopal Varma found the shoe-licking scene between Ranbir Kapoor and Triptii Dimri "inconsistent" in Sandeep Reddy Vanga's Animal.

Ram Gopal Varma points out what didn't work for him in Sandeep Reddy Vanga's Animal.

Ram Gopal Varma and Sandeep Reddy Vanga haven’t missed a chance to heap praise on each other. However, their mutual admiration doesn’t come without some objective feedback for each other’s films. After raving about Vanga’s latest directorial, the 2023 blockbuster family crime drama Animal, Varma recently addressed his points of contention with the film.

“I don’t like the father-son relationship. I told that to Sandeep too,” said RGV, explaining why he didn’t connect to the father-son story brought to the screen by Anil Kapoor and Ranbir Kapoor, respectively, in Animal. “I was fed up with Anil Kapoor. I lost my impression of the hero for sucking up to him. That’s my opinion, sir. But I differ with the lakhs of people who watched the film. I don’t know what they liked,” added Varma.

Sandeep Reddy Vanga chuckled at Ram Gopal Varma’s unfiltered criticism as they shared the couch on Jayammu NischayammuRaa with Jagapathi. Vanga also reminded Varma that the latter also didn’t like the controversial shoe-licking scene in Animal, in which Ranbir asks his love interest, played by Triptii Dimri, to lick his shoe in order to prove her loyalty to him. “Ya, it was inconsistent,” Varma agreed.

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However, Varma reiterated that the scene, in which Ranbir walks out of the school with a machine gun in his hand, is the only time in his life that he stood up and clapped in the theatre. He claimed that Vanga doesn’t need too much scale or VFX to tell the story of a man larger than life. RGV even hailed Vanga as a better filmmaker than Baahubali and RRR director SS Rajamouli.

The shoe-licking scene prompted criticism from several quarters when Animal released. Veteran screenwriter Javed Akhtar also slammed it in one of his speeches, but also clarified later that he hadn’t seen Animal. Vanga took umbrage to his claim and said he’s shocked Akhtar couldn’t appreciate that scene despite being such a seasoned screenwriter himself.

Vanga also underlined Akhtar’s hypocrisy for not calling out the abusive language and extremely violent scenes in Amazon Prime Video India Original show Mirzapur, which is produced by his son Farhan Akhtar’s Excel Entertainment. Akhtar responded that he feels “flattered” that Vanga couldn’t pick even a single scene or dialogue from his vast filmography that could be labelled “regressive.”

Also Read: How Celine Song’s Materialists is an inadvertent, sharp feminist response to Sandeep Reddy Vanga’s Animal

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Animal revolves around Rannvijay Singh (Ranbir), a man so desperate for his father Balbir Singh’s (Anil Kapoor) validation that he turns violent and vengeful. The film also starred Bobby Deol, Rashmika Mandanna, Triptii Dimri, Shakti Kapoor, and Prem Chopra, among others. It earned over Rs 500 crore at the domestic box office despite getting negative feedback from a large section of society for being sexist.

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