'You made a problematic movie': Fans lash out at the makers of Animal and support Javed Akhtar in the ongoing fiasco.

Animal makers slam Javed Akhtar for ‘dangerous’ criticism, call his art ‘false’ if he didn’t get context: ‘If a woman said, lick my shoe.

Filmmaker Sandeep Reddy Vanga’s Animal has finally slowed down at the box office, but the seeming vitriol on Twitter is still powering through. The official page of Ranbir Kapoor’s Animal has now lashed out at veteran writer Javed Akhtar, days after he indirectly criticised the blockbuster.

Animal, which was released on December 1, met with polarising reviews, sharply dividing the audience. While a section of the audience found the action thriller audacious, others called it out for peddling toxic masculinity and being a highly problematic film.

Recently, Akhtar too had indirectly spoken about Animal and said, “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 the film is a super hit, that’s dangerous.” He referred to the scene between Ranbir and Triptii Dimri’s characters in the film.

Reacting to his comments, made during the 9th Ajanta-Ellora International Film Festival in Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar, the official account of Animal on X (formerly Twitter) tagged Javed Akhtar and said if the veteran missed the context of the said scene, they all his art form is “false”. The account also wrote that love should be “free from the politics of gender.”

"If a writer of your calibre cannot understand the betrayal of a lover (between Zoya and Ranvijay), then all your art forms are 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 feminism. Let love be free from the politics of gender. Let’s just call them lovers. The lover cheated and lied. Lover said to lick my shoe. Period @Javedakhtarjadu,” the post read.

This isn’t the first time Animal’s official page has reacted to criticism strongly, as it has previously slammed writer-actor Swanand Kirkire, film critic Anupam Chopra, and journalists who have called the film out.

Animal has broken all box office records, emerging as the second highest-grossing Bollywood film of 2023 behind Shah Rukh Khan’s Jawan. The conversations around the film made Animal one of the most discussed films of recent times, much like Vanga’s last directorial, Kabir Singh.

The Indian Express.