"Meri Beti Sunny Leone Banna Chaahti Hai" or "My Daughter Wants to Be a Pornstar" is an indian hindi-language movie from 2017, so this one is 1.5 years old now roughly and in these 18 months it scored 5 million views on youtube which isn't too shabby. The director is Ram Gopal Varma and he is a pretty prolific filmmaker, maybe the most prolific attached to this short film next to the only male actor who is also enjoying a long career. The film runs for slightly over 11 minutes and it is about a young Indian woman telling her parents that she wants to have a career in the adult industry going by the alias of Sunny Leone. Okay, people here in the western world would not have liked the idea that much honestly and India is still a completely different location. Now, there are many problems with this film though. It tries to make a statement pro women, not just in film, but in general, which is generally a good idea, but the execution here feels shoddy and pseudo-important. The lead actress is not particularly good, you can clearly see she has all the lines and what she is saying in her head and it feels forced and stale. This could have worked taking into account how the character may have prepared all she said beforehand too, but no it just doesn't, also because there are scenes when she is supposed to answer her father spontaneously. The parents are a joke in terms of how they were written honestly delivering nothing but outrage and tears while never getting one centimeter under the surface. And all this while the film clearly takes itself so seriously. This movie is emancipation all gone wrong to be honest and it has the exact opposite effect. The final weak moment is when the director included a quote by himself in the closing credits. I mean can you be any more full of yourself? This is really an important subject and while I think emancipation in the western world is at a point where equality is almost there and you should not believe people telling you otherwise, India has a lot to work on in that department still. This film is not a help whatsoever. Watch something else instead.
