Director Buchi Babu Sana’s massive ₹300-crore sports action drama Peddi has set the global box office on fire, blasting past the ₹100 crore milestone within its first 24 hours of release. However, the film’s financial triumph is currently being overshadowed by a severe and widespread wave of public backlash.
Netizens and film critics alike have fiercely condemned the project’s romantic track, accusing the filmmakers of hyper-sexualizing leading lady Janhvi Kapoor and normalizing physical assault under the guise of “playful courtship.”
Breaking his silence on the intensifying social media storm, director Buchi Babu Sana addressed the controversy head-on during a media interaction. The filmmaker admitted that the furious audience response caught the creative team completely off guard.
“I had not anticipated that the scenes would be perceived so negatively by audiences. The original creative vision was simply to showcase a lighthearted, playful romance story between the characters played by Ram Charan and Janhvi Kapoor. However, we take this feedback seriously. Going forward, we will be far more careful and ensure we make better, more progressive representations of women on screen.”
The Controversy Explained: Why ‘Peddi’ Sparked Widespread Outrage
While the second half of Peddi is earning widespread praise for its powerful narrative about a marginalized tribal hamlet in Vizianagaram fighting for social identity through sports, the film’s first half has drawn intense criticism. Audiences, particularly female viewers, have pointed out a sharp hypocrisy in a movie that claims to be a grand narrative about human dignity, yet strips its leading female character of basic agency.
The primary outrage stems from a sequence involving Ram Charan’s titular character and Janhvi Kapoor’s character, Achiyyamma. In the film, Peddi openly tells his friends that he intends to touch Achiyyamma without her consent because she would otherwise never agree to his advances. He later fulfills this declaration by using the sudden cover of a neighborhood power cut to forcefully kiss her. When a visibly traumatized Achiyyamma breaks down in tears, other male characters in the frame actively pressure her to remain silent and “forget about it” to protect her father’s local political aspirations.
Devalued and Objectified: The Framing of Achiyyamma
Prominent voices across the film fraternity have slammed the movie’s visual grammar. Critics noted that Achiyyamma’s grand introduction sequence focuses entirely on tight, lingering close-ups of Kapoor’s midriff and body for several minutes before ever showing her face, establishing her purely as an object of desire.
| Critical Assessment Area | Film Execution in Peddi | Mainstream Audience & Critical Backlash |
| Character Introduction | Camera lingers on close-ups of Janhvi Kapoor’s body. | Condemned as blatant, uncomfortable objectification that devalues the actress. |
| The Consent Arc | Hero forcefully kisses the heroine; she later reciprocates without him facing any consequences. | Criticized for reinforcing dangerous, outdated tropes that a woman’s “no” is just a hurdle to bypass. |
| Narrative Purpose | Achiyyamma exists primarily as a “Manic Pixie Dream Girl” to prop up the hero. | Viewed as a massive writing misfire that completely isolates her from the core, gritty plot. |
Adding fuel to the fire, actress Gayatri Chaganti publicly criticized the film’s creative choices, stating that Kapoor’s character was reduced to a mere prop. Furthermore, eagle-eyed fans noticed that Janhvi Kapoor herself recently “liked” an analytical social media post calling Peddi “the most expensive disrespect ever paid to a leading woman in Indian cinema.” Inside sources indicate that Kapoor had explicitly questioned the necessity of those specific shots during post-production edits, but her concerns were ultimately bypassed by the directorial team in the final theatrical cut.
A Recurring Pattern for the Filmmaker?
For Buchi Babu Sana, this isn’t the first time his portrayal of young female leads has raised eyebrows. His National Award-winning 2021 directorial debut, Uppena, similarly featured a romantic track built around an obsessive, relentless pursuit of a female character (played by Krithi Shetty, who was 17 during production). While Uppena’s commercial blockbuster status largely shielded it from heavy scrutiny at the time, the sheer pan-India scale of Peddi has ensured that the current conversation surrounding creative accountability and on-screen consent cannot be easily ignored.