Helen Thomas

Visually polished movie with slick cinematography and some well-edited boxing sequences, but that’s about it. The first half dragged with overdone background scores and cringe/flat comedy. The romantic subplots felt half-baked and pointless, especially Naslen’s womaniser arc that led nowhere. His ‘bestie’ was shown to have potential, only to be forgotten entirely later. The boxing element was rushed and unearned—no real training arc, no proper buildup to the championship. Naslen’s character felt like a mere annoying hype man rather than a lead. Even the fights lacked weight, with only one decent bout (Deepak ettan’s). Anagha’s fight was engaging for the song but felt like a token girl-power moment and the scene of the audience chanting for the alappuzha entry felt extremely cheesy. The ending seemed incomplete and abrupt after a long unnecessary fight scene. Wasted potential, underwritten characters, and a plot stitched together just enough to get from scene to scene. Could’ve been a decent OTT watch at best.

(Spoiler ahead — not that it matters.) Honestly, I felt pretty disappointed. The film tries hard to get the audience to connect with a gritty “romance” between a sex worker and the son of a Russian oligarch and the later consequences of their decisions, but it leans far too heavily on shock value—profanity, nudity, a lot of “f*ck”s and exaggerated accents—while offering very little in terms of plot progression or character depth. Anora’s decisions felt immature and frankly implausible for a stripper who’s supposed to be street-smart and money-savvy. The ending didn’t offer any meaningful closure either—it just left me feeling uneasy. I frankly didnt see the supposed “real and incredible character arc” there. She defaults to her usual transactional habits—offering sex as gratitude for the ring—and then collapses into tears in the arms of the man because unlike most men, he never tried to rape her like she suspected initially and showed her affection by unexpectedly kissing her? Is that the ‘raw emotional’ climax? What exactly am I meant to take from the whole plot? A lot of people mentioned the film had laugh-out-loud moments too, but I didn’t find a single scene funny or amusing. Mikey Madison gave a committed performance, no doubt—but I truly believe there were better performances from actresses in better films this year. Anora felt overhyped, chaotic, and more focused on making noise than saying something meaningful. Overall, a frustrating watch.