Soni Razdan has entered the conversation around her son-in-law's biggest film yet, and she's not hedging.

Talking to PTI, the actor said Nitesh Tiwari's Ramayana, which casts Ranbir Kapoor as Lord Ram, is shaping up to be what she called "a fantastic journey." Her exact words: "An experience and something which we've not seen before. So that is, I think, what came to me from the trailer. It looks like it's going to take us places we haven't been before. I think for me, that's the most exciting part of it."

The comments land at a moment when Kapoor's casting as Ram has been the subject of criticism, though what exactly that criticism centres on isn't spelled out in Razdan's interview. What is clear is that Razdan, who is Alia Bhatt's mother and therefore Kapoor's mother-in-law, is squarely in his corner.

Ramayana itself is being built as a scale statement. The film stars Sai Pallavi as Sita and Yash as Ravana, and it's produced by Namit Malhotra's DNEG along with Prime Focus Studios. On the music side, the project has pulled in Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard, an Oscar winner and a Grammy winner working the score together. That's the kind of production credit list usually reserved for a Hollywood tentpole, not a mythological drama, and it's part of why the trailer has drawn so much attention since it dropped.

Razdan wasn't alone in her enthusiasm. Anshuman Jha, who is producing and acting alongside her in the unrelated slice-of-life drama Om Ka Hari, called the Ramayana trailer "spectacular" in the same conversation. "I think our history is very strong... I think it's imperative. Mahabharata and Ramayan are part of our history. I think doing it at that scale, and with that sort of glorification is beautiful. I personally feel and I'm really looking forward to the picture," he said.

Om Ka Hari, directed by Harish Vyas and also featuring Raghubir Yadav and Ayesha Kapoor, opened in theatres on September 18, the same window in which this round of press commentary surfaced.

For Ramayana, no release date has been mentioned in this round of reporting. What's clear is that the trailer has already split opinion enough that people close to the film, family included, feel the need to defend it in public. Whether that debate cools once the film actually reaches theatres, or gets louder, is the thing to watch.