LDLS or ALDLS?
Movie watching in the good old days
When I was a kid, I would read the Hindu Newspaper’s ‘Friday Review’ section for movie reviews. It was not like my parents would take me to good movies when they got screened. These ‘movie reviews’ were mostly balanced articles that told you something about the movies that would be released during the weekend. If I was lucky, someone in my classroom or in my school bus may have watched the movie that week, and I would get a chance to listen to the story from him or her. These first-hand accounts are how I heard about Titanic and the Gladiator. If the movie was really good, and many of my friends watched it, my sister and I could nudge our parents to take us to the movies.
These things changed rather quickly after this point. There was the age of DVD and movie piracy during the early 2000s, and by the time the 2010s started, we had high-speed internet, torrenting, and OTT streaming. These days, we do not wait for newspapers to publish reviews. We can either do a quick Google search or look it up on Rotten Tomatoes, IMDB, or one of the other sites that are available in various vernacular languages. Movie reviewers began to emerge - they set up YouTube channels and began providing reviews immediately after the FDFS - the First Day First Show. From what I watch on YouTube, at least half a dozen Tamil movie reviewers watch 2 to 3 movies every Friday and review them overnight to maximise their viewership. If the movie had a lot of hype, people would review it live on their Twitter (now X) handles. I know a friend who went to watch Avatar (the second one) and spent more time in the theatre typing than watching the movie. I guess he wanted to let others know he had managed to get a FDFS ticket -ultimate bragging rights in certain circles. Many moviegoers have already picked their favourite reviewers. It is their review that they rely on when deciding what to do over the weekend. I’m told it’s pretty good business, so some reviewers shoot their reviews from the theatre's parking lot immediately after the FDFS.
An experiment
Enough about this. It is in this ‘flux’y environment that my friend, Dr Parijat and I decided to do something entirely different - we wanted to go and check out the Last Day Last Show and review it. This way, we would remain as inconsequential as we would like to be and at the same time, get a flavor of how these reviewers go about doing your thing. Do not worry; a YouTube view of the two of us reviewing a movie will not pop up at the end of this. This is more like a critical commentary on a movie we watched recently. Let me declare upfront that this is not a decision that we are too proud of making - we went to watch Animal. What you will read after this may have some entertainment value, a lot of educational value, and a teeny weeny bit of sarcastic value. If you are not up for that sort of thing, now is the time to tune away and do something more meaningful.
As someone who has not watched many movies in recent years - I was confused between Tiger 3 and Animal. In fact, when I was in the theatre, they started off with the trailer of Tiger 3, and I was honestly confused about which Animal I was watching. While we are on the subject of Animals, let’s address the elephant in the room. The movie was one full on gore fest. It appears that they wanted to show the maximum number of deaths possible on screen. It was quite honestly surprising that there was no police anywhere to be seen (except when they came and informed the Hero about his father’s (spoiler: this is the body double) death. Had the sound of the bullets and punches been a teeny bit louder, I’m certain that some real police would have shown up on the theatre premises to ask us to reduce the volume.
The LDLS Review
The movie tells the tale of a son (Ranbir Kapoor) who adores his father (Anil Kapoor). The father, who is busy building a business empire, cannot spend time with his children. This causes the Ranbir to become an amalgamation of a child seeking attention and an ‘alpha male’. At the slightest sign of trouble, Ranbir overreacts and starts coming up with ‘explosive’ solutions. And I mean that quite literally. For instance, when his sister gets ragged by her seniors, Ranbir picks up an automatic rifle and fires it in a college classroom. He also proposes to Rashmika (the female lead) on the night before her marriage to another man and marries her himself. There are extraordinary displays of wealth and destruction of property. In addition to the Indian laws and the laws of physics that are meant to be broken in Indian cinema in recent years, Animal has ensured that a dozen laws of medicine were also broken.
Interestingly, one of my friends plays a role in the movie. No, Ranbir is not a friend yet. My friend Jaay was one of the 2769 dead bodies in the movie. Turns out, his death scene was also shot, but the editor decided that it was best to remove it since it was not gory enough. I really tried to find out where he was in the movie, but could not. He informs me that he had to watch the movie twice to spot the exact frame where he appears. We now have a running joke: if we cannot make good money in our day jobs, we can start a side gig supplying fake blood to Bollywood movies.
This review would not be complete if I did not give a shout-out to the wonderful trio who also watched the movie with us. These three gentlemen had booked regular seats while we had booked recliners. Sometime in the middle of the movie, they had decided that the theater was empty and that moving upstairs to the recliner seats was a worthwhile effort. In their minds, they did not see any harm in attempting this move. The ensuing debate that happened between the theater manager and these three was honestly more interesting to watch with popcorn than Ranbir Kapoor trying to convince his cousins from somewhere in Punjab to come and stay with him to protect his ‘papa’ who’s life was at significant risk.
The rest of the movie involves Ranbir seducing a woman who’s fictional fiancée’ (this was a lie) donated Ranbir a heart and burning a brand new Rolls Royce that was the color of a hickey on her neck to make her spill the beans on who was behind the attempt on Anil Kapoor’s life. Once he learns of the truth, he immediately dumps her, confesses his sexual transgressions to his wife, getting forgiveness over the course of a song, and then goes to Police Sans Scotland with fully automatic weapons and half a ton of bullets on a private jet to murder his cousin who converted to Islam and married three women.
After this quick murder, and the long murder on our senses and the hope for a better future, we are introduced to another Ranbir Kapoor (who is actually the villain who has surgically changes himself both inside and out (please skip this scene if possible)) who now wields two swords and hacks people as the hickey girl watches in disbelief. It turns out this animal did not die and will have a sequel - Animal Park (They should have decided to call it the Zoo, considering the Animal, the elephants in the room, and the sheep that we were as we got slaughtered along with our senses and common sense).
A message of unity?
Now, this brings us to an exciting twist. I am unable to do this review. I really thought I could pull this rabbit out of the hat (once again, we can add that to the zoo). This is not the kind of thing I can write about. Let me be honest, I did try. But I did want to talk about something interesting that’s somewhat related to the subject.
Remember the ‘Hindi Teriyadu Poda’ protests that the DMK had arranged in Tamilnadu a few years ago as a retaliation to making Hindi compulsory in certain areas. I think they have much to learn from Sandeep Vanga Reddy. Think about it. Honestly!
Recent trends suggest that Bollywood has run out of ideas. They are unable to make good movies. So what did they do - they imported talent from South Indian Cinema. We now have Reddy doing his animalistic carnage. King Khan just recently starred in an Atlee movie. Katrina Kaif is featuring opposite Vijay Sethupathi. The Silver screens in the north are slowly featuring the likes of Rashmika Mandanna and Nayanthara. In addition to AR Rahman and Ilayaraja, who have been national favourites, you now have Anirudh too. KGF, Pushpa, Lucifer, Vikram, Ponniyin Selvan, and many other South Indian Movies have begun to find acceptance in the Hindi Heartland. Perhaps MK Stalin and his Udanpirappukkal should learn from Reddy and the others and start using their love for movies that unite India to spread a message of peace instead of writing ‘Hindi Teriyadu Poda’ on T-shirts. Imagine, as low-paying jobs in the south are being taken over by migrant labourers from Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, the highest-paying jobs in Indian Cinema are being taken away from northerners by artistes from the South. This change is happening so swiftly and no one is talking about it at the moment. Maybe there is a deeper message of unity in all of this somewhere. This is just stuff to think about!
Post Credit Scene
As for our last day last show experiment - I have to report that we have also failed on one more count. After the release of Dunki and Salaar, we assumed that the Animal was finally dead - thus, the LDLS was watched, and review had been attempted. However, due to the dismal performance of Dunki, they managed to get Animal back on the screen - thereby making this review an ALDLS relive - Almost Last Day Last Show Review. It’s once again there on Paonta’s screens (I’m guessing its also on screens in other parts of the country), and you can go and watch it if you have nothing better to do thank you have a cacophony in your ear drums or a ALDLS review to write.
Until next time!
Cheers!
