I love Hindi action movies and I made the effort to go to a theatre different than the one I usually do to see Animal as the trailer looked awesome. However, I am not going to waste your time and let you know right now, that Animal is one of the worst movies of the year for me. This thing sucked big time, it made zero sense and even the action was not all that exciting.
How to Download Animal
Animal was released on 1 December 2023. About 45 days later you should be able to download or stream the film from a digital platform such as Netflix. Click on the Download button at the end of this review and check the current availability. If you like Indian movies, check out our reviews of RRR or Uri: The Surgical Strike.
The Movie Review
The reason that I went to see this was the trailer made it look like a story between a father and a son where the son is looking for revenge for what happened to his father. That right there is a cool storyline and that partially is what is here, but I would go as far as to say that 90 percent of this movie makes zero sense!
The Confusing Plot of Animal
Our main character is a man called Vijay. Vijay grew up idolizing his wealthy father, but his father has zero time for him. Due to getting into some trouble at school, Vijay is sent to America to study, he returns several years later and due to an incident at a wedding, is kicked out and he leaves for America with a woman he just reconnected with and starts a new family! This all goes down in what feels like no time at all by the way!
Flawed Execution
Many years later, Vijay’s father Balbir survives an assassination attempt. This causes Vijay to head back home to start a war to find the people responsible. He recruits all of these random family members to his cause and you just do not care about any of them at all! The movie tries to throw all these twists and turns at you to keep you “guessing” as to who is behind it all, but none of it makes any sense.
Poor Dialogue and Lackluster Action
The dialogue in Animal is some of the worst I have experienced in an action movie in a very long time! It is just flat-out weird like the actors were told to sometimes just say random stuff. It makes it a movie that is very hard to follow or actually care about. The attempts at humor are just flat-out cringe-inducing and make you wonder if it was written by a ten-year-old.
Conclusion: A Disappointing Hindi Action Movie
If the action was cool, I could probably overlook the nonsensical story and terrible characters, but even that is not great. It is all building up to a big showdown with who is really responsible for the assassination attempt, but the action is lackluster at best. Nothing feels exciting, you never actually care about what happens to Vijay and you just do not care in general about what is happening. To make matters worse, it kind of ends on a cliffhanger so they are clearly planning a sequel!
Final Thoughts on Animal
Like many other Hindi movies, Animal has a rather bloated run time, we are talking well over three hours here! This is three hours of my life that I am never getting back, it was made even worse by the fact I was so not into it, that I chowed down all my snacks before the halfway point! I would not recommend making the effort to see this one in the theatre at all, I would not even recommend checking it out when it comes to streaming!
