Has Ranveer Singh Lost It?

Ranveer Singh has a penchant for pushing boundaries. Some time ago, his nude photographs garnered him more criticism than fans.

His new advertisement, featuring him with porn star Johnny Sins, is deeply offensive in its aesthetic impropriety, political incorrectness, and moral ambiguity.

Ranveer believes he is promoting sexual awareness through the ad. This line of thought would be worth considering if he were spearheading a public-service campaign, akin to Amitabh Bachchan’s polio campaign or Aamir Khan’s tourism promotion.

However, this is all about cash. Hard cash. No pun intended. The ad promotes a capsule promising men with erectile dysfunction that they can "rise and shine" after ingesting it. Good luck with that.

The problem arises because there is no proof that such miraculous capsules actually work. Essentially, the ad serves as a public disinformation vehicle, and I am surprised that a man of Ranveer Singh’s intelligence fell for it.

Especially in an advertisement that believes it is so clever, it can offer a twisted version of Ekta Kapoor’s Saas-Bahu soap operas and get away with it.

Sadly, the ad is more licentious than audacious.

If the ad aims to spoof the tackiness of Ekta’s slippery soaps, the sliminess comes across as entirely self-referential, and not in a good way. Whoever wrote the script for the ad needs a crash course in the basics of satire.

Firstly, the presentation required subtlety and restraint to achieve the level of cheekiness it aspires to.

Instead, we are subjected to a hysterical Bahu storming out, screaming at her husband’s older brother, ‘Aapke chhote bhai ka Pappu can’t dance saala.”

Really? This brand of cheesy humor is supposed to create awareness about men’s sexual health? Yeah sure, as much as Poonam Pandey’s cancer awareness gimmick for women’s health.

The only clever move in this horribly misfired public (dis)service act is the casting of a porn star as a man who can’t get it up. As for Johnny Sins playing Ranveer Singh’s younger brother, there is a limit to the audience’s suspension of disbelief.

The next time Ranveer Singh is concerned about the sexual health of his brothers in Hindustan, he could try something more subtle, less cheesy, and much less lucrative.