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When I started thinking of the worst films of the year, Sandeep Reddy Vanga’s Animal won hands down. There were several turkeys in 2023, but nothing can beat this ugly, misogynistic paean to the Alpha male who thinks nothing of demeaning the women around him – mothers, sisters, wives, lovers – just to prove his ‘mardaangi’. Scratch that, not even demeaning, it’s debasing. It is a film which may well turn out to be the biggest blockbuster of the year. It has given Ranbir Kapoor an unimaginable career boost. The other stars, especially Bobby Deol, Rashmika Mandanna and Tripti Dimri, will all get a leg-up on that tricky ladder which combines remuneration and recognition. But the film will be a blot on their CVs.
The only other one that can conceivably come close is Adipurush, which was supposed to be a worshipful tribute to the Maryada Purushottam. But this Om Raut monstrosity, starring Prabhas, Saif Ali Khan and Kriti Sanon, was dead on arrival: you can hide behind synonyms — Ram is Raghav, Sita is Janaki, Ravan is Lankesh– but there’s no running away from the fact that it was a confused, crass mash-up of Harry Potter and Lord Of The Rings and Game Of Thrones, minus any signs of reverence and piety.
If you want a cringe-fest, just listen to its dialogues again. There are so many awful ones that I didn’t know which to pick. But, okay, here goes: ‘Kapda tere baap ka, tel tere baap ka, aag bhi tere baap ki, toh jalegi bhi tere baap ki.’ Ram ram.
And how can I forget The Kerala Story which claimed that it was doing a noble thing by uncovering the dastardly plans of spiriting away innocent Hindu and Christian young women from Kerala and converting them to Islam. Director Sudipto Sen and creative producer Vipul Amrutlal Shah claimed that their film was based on truth, telling the story of 32,000 young women who were held captive in ISIS camps on the Syria-Turkey border: it turned out that the number was 3, but the filmmakers did not think that there was a difference between the two numbers.
It doesn’t just have a communal slant; the film peddles disinformation disingenuously, simply to increase polarisation in an already fractured polity. It’s also a badly-made, badly-acted film.
After breezing in to help Pathaan, Salman Khan went off to play in his own franchise. And showed up in Tiger 3, only to have wifey Katrina Kaif nearly dropping a towel and winning a deadly duel, neatly eclipsing the one and only Bhai. Is I-Spy is the only game left for this Khan? It would appear that there’s nothing else we want to see him do. Even his most ardent fans deserted him in the godawful Kisi Ka Bhai, Kisi Ki Jaan, in which Bhaijaan plays yet another version of himself in a plot which can not get over its delight of having him in the first place. Who cares, in fact, if there’s zero plot?
The answer was writ in the empty halls.
The last spot on this list is a toss-up between Tejas, and Ganapath. The first is Kangana Ranaut’s attempt at being a patriot and a fighter-pilot, in which she isn’t as terrible as the movie, but cannot save it from crash-landing. The kindest thing I can say about ‘Ganapath’, starring Tiger Shroff, Kriti Sanon and Amitabh Bachchan, is that it should have stayed as an idea.
Sending a fervent prayer that Bollywood is future-proofed against ‘Animal’ me-toos: imagine all those poor leading ladies having to lick their heroes’ boots?
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