What the Critics Got Right and Wrong About Hanuman Ansh — A Philosophical Review of the Reviews
Critics called Hanuman Ansh slow and full of magic. Much of that should stand. But a verdict on craft is not a verdict on the whole, and a devotee who treats every criticism as an insult does more damage than any two-star review.
In Brief
On its opening day, a trade review predicted Hanuman Ansh would find few takers. Two months later it was among the year’s biggest commercial surprises. This article reads the reviews I could locate, from trade papers to Letterboxd, and asks who was right about what.
The craft critics were largely right: the film is sincere and modest, but too long and sometimes static. Read through Indian aesthetics, their sharpest complaint becomes sharper still: the film drifts from devotion into wonder, until we are asked to marvel at the devotee rather than share his devotion. But some critics also mistook a forecast for a judgement, condemned repetition without asking what it was for, and assumed only believers could be moved.
The article asks whether the film is propaganda, and separates the three questions that word hides. It then turns to devotees, whose errors can do more lasting damage. It ends with the ideal viewer of Indian aesthetics, the sahṛdaya, and three questions any serious review of a film like this must answer: craft, rasa and dharma.
Core Thesis
Most critics judged Hanuman Ansh as a drama and found it slow, repetitive and overloaded with miracles. Much of that should stand. But a verdict on craft does not settle what a film makes possible for its viewers, and an audience’s response does not erase a film’s flaws. Indian aesthetics offers a better ideal: the sahṛdaya, whose judgement is trained and whose response stays open. Such a critic asks three distinct but connected questions: how well is it made, what experience does its form create, and what values does it encourage? A serious review answers all three, and lets the answers differ.
The Film Critics Called Boring Became One of the Biggest Surprises of the Year
On the day Hanuman Ansh opened, one trade review predicted there would not be many takers, because Neem Karoli Baba was popular only with a section of the public. It noted that the film was playing one show a day at a Mumbai cinema [1].
Two months later, Business Today reported a worldwide gross above ₹424 crore and called it the most profitable Bollywood film of 2026, with a return of over 15,000 percent on a reported ₹2 crore budget [2]. Those are reported trade figures, not audited accounts. Gross collections are not what the producers keep, and a reported budget may leave out release and promotion costs. Even so, the gap between forecast and result is enormous. One producer said people in Bollywood had refused to invest even small amounts in the film, and that some later apologised to her [3]. The film ends with the promise of a sequel, and its makers had planned a trilogy from the start [4].
A failed prediction is not a crime. But it is information. When a forecast fails this badly, the useful question is not “why was the audience wrong?” It is “which of my assumptions failed?” Was the audience underestimated? Did word of mouth change the film’s path? Did the release widen? The failure tells us the model did not fit this outcome. It does not, by itself, tell us why.
Here is a short story. Rohan is invented; the reviews he stands among are real.
Rohan Kapadia has reviewed Hindi films in Mumbai for eleven years. He gave Hanuman Ansh two stars: “sincere but static, a devotional pamphlet with a background score.” In the film’s fifth week his editor sends him to Lucknow to write about the phenomenon. He stands at the back of Audi 3 in a multiplex where the floor manager, Sunil, has laid out a plastic sheet for footwear. This time Rohan does not watch the screen. He watches the room. At the end, nobody leaves during the credits. On the train home he types a title he does not yet know how to justify: “I Reviewed the Screen. I Should Have Reviewed the Room.”
This article is my attempt at the review Rohan was reaching for. Its scope, stated plainly: I read the reviews I could locate online between the film’s release on 7 August and mid-October 2026. That meant trade papers, national dailies, Hindi and Telugu sites, an essay on Medium, celebrity reactions, and a sample of audience reviews on Letterboxd and Rotten Tomatoes. It is not every review ever written, and audience reviews come from people moved enough to post, so they show the range of reactions, not the average. Where I describe the film, I rely on these reviews and my own viewing. Where I state what a critic said, I name the critic.
Part One — Six Questions, and the Blind Men and the Elephant
There is an old Indian story about this kind of argument. In the Buddhist Udāna, a king gathers men born blind and lets each touch one part of an elephant [5]. The one who touches the head says an elephant is like a pot. The one who touches the ear says it is like a winnowing basket. The one who touches the tusk says it is like a ploughshare, and the one who touches the tuft of the tail says it is like a broom. Each is sure. Each is partly right. They end up fighting with their fists. The Jains later built a distinct philosophy, anekāntavāda, on a related insight: reality has many sides, and any single assertion is partial [6].
The parable fits only some disagreements. Some critics attended to one part and missed the rest; that is the elephant. But some disagreements are about different standards, some are honest differences of interpretation, some are factual errors, and some are large claims built on small evidence. Those need different answers. Not every view is a partial truth.
The reviews of Hanuman Ansh ask six kinds of question, and most reviews ask more than one.
How well is it made? Here the critics mostly agreed. The Times of India gave it 3.5 out of 5, finding its pace measured and its structure episodic, but praising its conviction and the lead actor’s understated performance. DNA, also 3.5, said it impressed less with its filmmaking than with Baba’s journey. I read both as excerpted on Rotten Tomatoes [7]. Deccan Chronicle gave 3 and found it too long [8]. News18 gave 3.5 and praised it for working without show or elaborate drama, as summarised on District [9].
What kind of film is it trying to be? Kangana Ranaut answered bluntly: “not a movie, it’s a satsang” [10]. Varun Dhawan, who watched it with his mother, called it something divine [11].
Does it respect reason? Gulte, at 2.75, was sharpest. It praised the first half and the dialogues, but objected to the “magic” of the second half and the excessive glorification of the Baba, and argued that liking the film depends on what you believe about spiritual gurus [12]. An essay on Medium agreed that the film shows Baba as almost God-like, followed without question, and reported viewers’ complaints that some visuals looked AI-generated [13]. That last claim is unverified.
Who will come? That was Film Information’s question, and it answered: not many [1].
Whose side is it on? Some assumed it was Hindu-Muslim propaganda. Kamaal R Khan replied that there is no Hindu-Muslim debate in it at all [14].
What did it do to people? Audience reviews are full of people who wished it had not ended; one Letterboxd viewer who had only heard of the saint called it decent and unpreachy [15].
These questions need different kinds of evidence. “Too slow” is a judgement of craft. “Few takers” is a forecast. “A satsang” is a report of an experience. The box office can refute a forecast. It cannot refute a judgement of craft. Many arguments about this film went wrong by mixing these up, like blind men fighting over which part is the real elephant.
Part Two — The Critic Our Tradition Wanted: The Sahṛdaya
If every reviewer touched only one part, who could see the whole? Indian aesthetics has a name for the ideal viewer: the sahṛdaya, literally “one with heart”. The ninth-century critic Ānandavardhana built his theory of poetry around this figure, and Abhinavagupta defined him in his commentary:
Those whose mirror of the mind has been polished by long practice with poetry, so that they are able to become one with what is described, and whose hearts answer to it: they are the sahṛdayas. (Abhinavagupta, Locana on the Dhvanyāloka 1.1) [16]
Notice the two halves. The mirror is polished by study: knowledge of form, craft and tradition. And the heart answers: the viewer is open enough to receive what the work offers. Lose either half and you lose the critic.
This is a hard standard, and it cuts both ways. A critic with a polished mirror and a closed heart sees every flaw and misses what the work does. A devotee with an open heart and an unpolished mirror feels everything and judges nothing. But it would be too easy to hand out these labels. A critic can be moved by a film and still conclude, rightly, that it is badly paced. A devotee can be deeply moved and still know a great deal about cinema. The sahṛdaya is not the critic who agrees with the devotee, or the devotee who agrees with the critic. It is the viewer who can notice how a work is made, respond to what it offers, and keep that response separate from a final verdict.
Receiving an experience is not the same as accepting every claim attached to it. A viewer can taste the film’s grief without accepting its theology, be moved by a chant without believing every miracle, and admire a performance while rejecting the film’s picture of authority.
The rest of this article tries to review the film that way. A fair critic, as I understand the job, describes the work accurately, separates observation from interpretation, judges by standards that can be defended, says what the work does well, and does not turn a personal response into a verdict about the whole audience. That standard applies to this article too.
Part Three — Where the Critics Were Right
A defender of Sanātana should be the first to say what the critics got right. A tradition that claims to correct its errors cannot ask for an exemption, as I argued in The Architecture of Error Correction.
The glorification charge is fair. Rasa theory gives precise words for what went wrong. In my reading, the first half lives mainly in karuṇa rasa, the taste of grief, and in bhakti rasa, the devotional rasa worked out by the Vaiṣṇava theologian Rūpa Gosvāmī: a boy’s loss, and his longing for Rāma through Hanuman [17]. The second half, by Gulte’s account, piles up wonders until wonder itself, adbhuta rasa, takes over. These frameworks come from different thinkers and contexts, and I bring them together as a lens, not as one agreed system. Through that lens, the film slides from bhakti into adbhuta: from devotion into amazement at the devotee.
Wonder is not the enemy of devotion. A miracle can deepen a story about compassion, or about the divine. The test is what each wonder adds. Does it reveal something new about the saint’s service, or his love of Rāma? Or does it repeat what the last one already showed? If the film’s centre is service rather than supernatural power, as its first half suggests, then the second half works against it: the saint’s powers become more memorable than the kindness that gave the film its force.
The “unquestioning followers” charge is fair too. If characters follow Baba without a single doubt, the film shows a devotion that the Gītā itself does not demand. At its end, after a long argument meant to persuade him, Kṛṣṇa leaves the decision to Arjuna:
I have told you this wisdom, more secret than all secrets. Reflect on it fully, then do as you wish. (Bhagavad Gītā 18.63) [18]
That verse does not settle every question about guru and disciple. It does show that deliberation has a place at the heart of our most important scripture.
The AI-visuals complaint deserves a careful answer. It is unconfirmed by the makers. If AI was used, the question is not “AI or no AI”. It is whether a viewer could take an invented image of a real saint, or a real place, for a record. A film that asks for trust should be the most open about how its images were made.
The complaints about pace and length are judgements of craft, and the critics know craft. A devotee who waves them away is refusing free advice.
Part Four — Where Some Critics Went Wrong
Three errors appear in the reviews. Each belongs to particular critics, not to “the critics” as a body, and each is more interesting than “they did not like it”.
Error one: the forecast (Film Information). Karl Popper argued that serious theories must face tests, and change when they fail them [19]. One wrong forecast does not overturn every theory of what audiences want. But it should start an audit of the assumptions behind it: stars, budget, marketing, and a belief that a saint’s appeal is narrow.
Was the film a success only because of Neem Karoli Baba’s followers? That was Gulte’s view. But in May 2026, another biographical film about the same saint, Shree Baba Neeb Karori Maharaj, starring Subodh Bhave, was released [1] [20]. The two films differed in budget, release, distribution and much else, so the comparison is not a controlled experiment. It does show one thing: the saint’s following alone cannot explain the difference. Something about this film, how it told the story or how it travelled, mattered too.
So why did it succeed? Nobody knows exactly, and anyone who claims certainty is selling something. Likely parts: a grieving child that anyone can enter, devotion presented gently, word of mouth, screens added as demand grew, and little competition for this kind of experience [21]. These are hypotheses, not findings.
Error two: judging repetition without asking what it was for (Film Information). Its complaint was that the film moves on a single track [1]. That is a fair point about narrative, and it deserves a fair answer. Bharata’s Nāṭyaśāstra explains how a performance produces rasa and names eight of them [22]. Each has its own grammar. A thriller needs surprise. A romance needs obstacles. A kīrtan needs repetition: the same name, again and again, until the mind settles.
A bhajan that repeats is doing its job. A film that repeats the same kind of scene may not be. The question is what each repetition changes. When the chants of Rāma, Śiva and Hanuman return, Gulte itself says they stay with you after you leave. That repetition deepens. When miracle follows miracle, each adding nothing the last did not, it only piles up. The critics were right about the second kind. Their mistake was to condemn the first kind with it.
Leo Tolstoy offered a definition of art that fits this film uncomfortably well:
Art is a human activity consisting in this, that one man consciously, by means of certain external signs, hands on to others feelings he has lived through, and that other people are infected by these feelings, and also experience them. (Leo Tolstoy, What Is Art?) [23]
By that test, a hall that stays through the credits is consistent with feeling passing across, though it does not prove what that feeling was. Tolstoy also judged art by which feelings it spreads. That is a separate question, and I take it up below.
Error three: “you will like it only if you believe” (Gulte). The claim is too categorical. Some of the film’s material, grief, service, longing, the search for meaning, can reach people who do not share its theology; one Letterboxd viewer who knew the saint only by name found it a decent watch [15]. That does not mean every non-believer will enjoy it, or that the miracle-heavy second half will work for everyone. But belief is one door into this film, not the only one. The structure explains why: it does not open with doctrine or a miracle. It opens with a child who has lost his mother. Grief is a door most of us have walked through.
Part Five — Is Hanuman Ansh Propaganda?
This question deserves a real answer, not a slogan from either side. The word hides three different questions.
Does it serve a political party or cause? Every review I read points the same way: none describes a party served, a community blamed or a political enemy. Even critics hostile to godmen did not call it political. On this evidence, it is not partisan propaganda.
Does it promote a worldview? Yes, openly, as any devotional film does. It wants you to find the saint admirable and devotion beautiful. Advocacy in the open is not propaganda in itself. The question is how it persuades.
Does it go around the viewer’s judgement? This is where the real risk lies: guru-glorification, the danger named in Part Three. A film that invites amazement at a man, and shows followers who never doubt, leans on wonder rather than reasons. That is a spiritual risk, not a party-political one, and it should be judged as one.
My conclusion is limited by my evidence. I have read the reviews and watched the film; I have not analysed it scene by scene. On that basis: not partisan propaganda, open devotional advocacy, and a real risk of discouraging judgement in its second half. If the film does largely stay out of communal conflict, as the reviews suggest, that restraint is worth noticing in the present climate.
Part Six — Where Some Devotees Went Wrong, and Why It Matters More
If I stopped here, this would be a defence written by a fan. Some devotees made their own errors, and they can do more lasting damage, because they arrive with folded hands.
Not all devotional defence is the same. A fan arguing that a reviewer missed the film’s emotional force is taking part in criticism. A fan claiming that every negative review is an attack on Sanātana is doing something different. An institution that punishes dissent is doing something worse still. My argument is with the second and the third.
Kangana Ranaut said to skip your therapy and go and watch it [10]. Should you? No. Watch the film, and keep your therapy if you need it. Comfort is valuable, but comfort is not a substitute for a different kind of help. A satsang, a film, a friend and a therapist do different work, and a grieving person may need more than one. Not every grieving person needs therapy. But no film should be offered as a reason to stop it.
Does the box office prove the film is divine? No. Popularity proves a need, not a truth, as I argued in the first article of this series.
The third error is the worst: “any criticism is an insult”. In my series on Dimāgī Sanātanī I described the corrigible mind: firm enough to act, open enough to be corrected. A devotee who treats criticism of a film’s pacing as an insult to the faith has made the faith smaller than a film review.
Criticism is not always harmless either. A critic can caricature a religious community, or repeat claims that feed prejudice, and a devotee is right to answer that. The real line is not between critics and devotees. It is between positions that stay answerable to evidence and positions that demand exemption from it. A critic’s error costs a film a few stars. A devotee’s refusal to hear criticism costs a tradition its ability to correct itself.
This is the third capacity this series is about. A civilisation that can take criticism without losing its devotion will last. One that cannot will either harden or break.
Part Seven — Craft, Rasa, Dharma: Three Verdicts, Not One
How would a sahṛdaya judge a film like this? I suggest three questions. Each needs its own evidence, and each has limits.
Craft: how well is it made? Look at structure, pacing, editing, performance, music, sound and image. Evidence: the film itself and close reviews. Here the critics are largely right: sincere, modest, too long, sometimes static, with strong music and a fine lead performance. Craft cannot tell you whether the film’s message is true or good.
Rasa: what experience does its form invite, and how? Look at how form, sound and story shape what a viewer can taste. Evidence: the film’s construction and the range of what viewers report. Here the film is strong in its first half, in karuṇa and bhakti, and weaker in its second, where adbhuta crowds out bhakti. Rasa cannot tell you what every viewer felt.
Dharma: what does it move people toward? Ask four things. What values does the film commend? What values do viewers actually take from it? Is there real evidence of changed conduct? Are those changes good, mixed or harmful? A film can inspire generosity and also encourage too much deference to a teacher; both must be counted. This plane cannot be judged on release day, and stories, including the ones in this series, are not evidence for it.
The three are distinct, but they interact. Craft shapes what can be tasted; a powerful rasa can make a weak argument persuasive; a film’s values change how its formal choices land. They should inform one another, but none can cancel another. Dharma does not make bad editing good, and good editing does not make a harmful message harmless.
So the verdicts can differ. A film can be modest in craft, strong in rasa, and still unknown in dharma. That is not a weak review. It is an accurate one.
I Reviewed the Screen. I Should Have Reviewed the Room.
Rohan’s column runs on a Sunday. He does not change his two stars. He explains that stars measure the screen, and that the room had measured something else, which his stars could not see. He did not need to change his verdict. He needed to say what it measured. Readers write in to argue with him from both sides. He takes that as a sign he got it about right.
That is where I land too. The critics were mostly right about the craft, and right that the film slides from devotion into amazement. Some went wrong when a verdict on craft became a verdict on everything, and when a forecast was mistaken for a judgement. Viewers’ reports of what they felt are real as reports; the explanations attached to them stay open to examination. And devotees who refuse to hear criticism make the error that can damage a tradition.
The blind men in the parable were not wrong about what they touched. They were wrong to think their part was the whole, and wrong to fight. The sahṛdaya’s task, and the reader’s, is to put the parts together without pretending any one of them was the elephant.
The final article in this series gathers the argument: why devotion needs logic, and logic needs devotion.
Words to keep
These are not slogans. Each line carries a step in the argument.
“A verdict on craft is not a verdict on the whole.” A film can be badly paced and still move people, or beautifully made and ethically troubling. One score cannot carry every judgement.
“The box office can refute a forecast. It cannot refute a judgement of craft.” Predictions can be checked against outcomes; quality cannot be settled by ticket sales, in either direction.
“A critic with a polished mirror and a closed heart sees every flaw and misses what the work does. A devotee with an open heart and an unpolished mirror feels everything and judges nothing.” Neither training nor feeling is enough alone. This is an ideal to aim at, not a label for people who disagree with you.
“The film slides from bhakti into adbhuta: from devotion into amazement at the devotee.” My reading of the second half. Wonder is not the problem; wonder that adds nothing new, and turns attention from service to power, is.
“A bhajan that repeats is doing its job. A film that repeats the same kind of scene may not be.” Judge repetition by what it does: deepen, or merely pile up.
“The saint’s following alone cannot explain the difference.” Two films on the same saint fared very differently. That rules out one simple explanation; it does not prove another.
“Grief is a door most of us have walked through.” The film opens with loss, which reaches people who do not share its theology. A shared emotion does not guarantee a shared interpretation.
“Comfort is not a substitute for a different kind of help.” A film can console. It cannot replace care that someone needs.
“A critic’s error costs a film a few stars. A devotee’s refusal to hear criticism costs a tradition its ability to correct itself.” Disagreeing with a critic is fine. Treating disagreement as disloyalty is what does the damage.
“Reflect on it fully, then do as you wish.” (Gītā 18.63) Even Kṛṣṇa leaves Arjuna room to think. I use the verse against the idea that devotion requires suspending judgement.
Terms
Sahṛdaya: the cultivated, responsive viewer: trained in form, open in heart.
Anekāntavāda: the Jain teaching that reality has many sides. A reason to check the scope of a claim, not to treat every claim as equal.
Karuṇa, adbhuta, śānta rasa: the aesthetic tastes of grief, wonder and peace.
Bhakti rasa: devotional rasa, as developed by Rūpa Gosvāmī in the Vaiṣṇava tradition. Not one of Bharata’s original eight.
Dharma: used here as a practical question about what values a film commends and what conduct it encourages, not as a full definition.
How I wrote this
Scope: I read the reviews I could locate between 7 August and mid-October 2026, listed below. It is not an exhaustive survey of every critic or viewer.
Attribution: Where I say what a critic said, I name the critic. Where a review is quoted through an aggregator, I say so. Where I offer my own reading, as with the slide from bhakti into adbhuta, I mark it as mine.
Unverified claims: The AI-visuals complaint is reported, not confirmed. I repeat it only to discuss the standard it raises.
Figures: Box-office numbers are reported trade estimates of gross, not audited profits.
What is invented: Rohan is fictional. He illustrates a kind of critic; he is not evidence about any real one.
Translations: Renderings of Sanskrit and Pāli are my own unless a translator is named.
Tools: I researched and revised this series with the help of AI tools for fact-checking and editing. The arguments, the judgements and any errors are mine. Corrections will be noted at the foot of the article.
Sources
Hanuman Ansh review, Film Information, 7 August 2026.
After ₹424 crore run, Hanuman Ansh to release in Telugu, Business Today, 6 October 2026.
Hanuman Ansh producer reveals how Bollywood ignored the film, Kerala Kaumudi.
Hanuman Ansh ends with the promise of a sequel, Bollywood Hungama.
Udāna 6.4; John D. Ireland (trans.), The Udāna and the Itivuttaka (Kandy: Buddhist Publication Society, 1997).
Jeffery D. Long, Jainism: An Introduction (London: I. B. Tauris, 2009), on anekāntavāda.
Hanuman Ansh critics’ reviews, including Times of India and DNA, Rotten Tomatoes.
Hanuman Ansh review, Deccan Chronicle.
News18 review summary, District.
Kangana Ranaut reviews Hanuman Ansh, Free Press Journal.
Varun Dhawan calls Hanuman Ansh divine, Bollywood Hungama.
Hanuman Ansh review, Gulte.
Hanuman Ansh: an honest verdict, Medium.
Hanuman Ansh reviews, Letterboxd.
Abhinavagupta, Locana on Ānandavardhana’s Dhvanyāloka 1.1; Daniel H. H. Ingalls, Jeffrey M. Masson and M. V. Patwardhan (trans.), The Dhvanyāloka of Ānandavardhana with the Locana of Abhinavagupta (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990). The rendering here is mine.
Rūpa Gosvāmī, Bhaktirasāmṛtasindhu; David L. Haberman (trans.), The Bhaktirasāmṛtasindhu of Rūpa Gosvāmin (New Delhi: Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts and Motilal Banarsidass, 2003).
Bhagavad Gītā 18.63. Sanskrit text and several standard translations at the Gita Supersite, IIT Kanpur. The rendering here is mine.
Karl Popper, Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge (London: Routledge, 1963), chapter 1.
Neem Karoli Baba, Wikipedia (on the May 2026 film).
Hanuman Ansh’s unexpected box office success, The Week, 8 September 2026.
Bharata, Nāṭyaśāstra, chapter 6, trans. Manomohan Ghosh (Calcutta: Royal Asiatic Society of Bengal, 1950).
Leo Tolstoy, What Is Art? (1897), trans. Aylmer Maude (London: Oxford University Press, 1930).
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