Sunny Leone’s notoriety as a porn star has held her in good stead in Hindi movies thus far. The stuff of dreams is the mascot of an anti-smoking public service advertisement directed by Vibhu Puri and based on a story idea by Jeet Mody. In a clever piece of casting, Alok Nath is the pater of a Jat familias who learns that his son Deepu (Deepak Dobriyal) is on the verge of death. Deepu has one last wish: he wants to spend his final moments with Sunny Leone.
No short film can carry the burden of mixed messages contained in this slick but ineffective PSA. Since neither smoking nor tobacco chewing is identified as the cause for Deepu’s imminent demise, it is unclear until the very end that it is his addiction that prevents him from going out of the world with a bang. The quirky narrative might annoy activists who don’t want smoking-related deaths to be trivialised, as will the suggestion that the women of the household most enthusiastically pander to Deepu’s dying wish. Men will always be men, apparently, even with one foot in the grave.
Besides, smoking is said to cause impotence, and all the Leones of the world would not have helped Deepu. This one needs to be filed away in the “Anything to get Sunny Leone in my film for attention’ category.