5 Toxic Lessons All Luv Ranjan Movies Teach Impressionable Young Men

I remember watching ‘Pyaar ka Punchnama’ when I was 14 and had a ball (I enjoyed it). I loved it then and laughed at the casual misogyny because my peers did.

And then I grew up.

When I think of it, Luv Ranjan’s movies are not just painful female bashing, obnoxious and misogynistic. It also normalises a lot of crap, including this demonising of women to an inconceivable extent; and it’s prevalent in all his narratives.

In case you didn’t know, Luv Ranjan is a filmmaker, writer and director whom I’ve found problematic from the start, as problematic as Sandeep Vanga Reddy (Kabir Singh’s director). Ranjan’s filmography includes the super-hit trilogy of Pyar ka Punchnama (2011), Pyaar ka Punchnama 2 (2015) and Sonu ke Titu ki Sweety (2018). In addition, Luv Ranjan’s movies include Chhalang (2020) and Malang (2020), which were box-office hits and decent watches.

Here are 5 things that Luv Ranjan’s movies tell us and try to make us believe.

1. “All women are gold diggers”

The theme of his superhit movies has always been heavy on women being gold diggers. According to Mr Ranjan, all women are gold diggers and will bleed your wallet dry because that’s how they are built; poor saintly naive men are lured in for money and are ‘used’ and victimised and made so gullible. Awww.

Pyaar ka punchnama, both parts have the guys coming together and making their girlfriends realise how much they spend on them, and by the end, they are ungrateful about it. Women are shown as conniving and vile, whose only agenda is to ‘mint money out of their boyfriends’.

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2. “A man is always right; it’s always the woman that makes him go crazy”

Men are righteous, and women make their lives full of lies and deception. Every movie shows how they used to live a happy life in their bachelor’s pad and how women always cheat behind their backs, have a spiritual best friend with whom they share a bed and are staying with the guy with an ulterior motive and never out of love. And no, it’s not one woman. It’s all the female characters in his film. For instance – Pyar ka Punchnama 1.

Charu is bleeding Nishant’s wallet dry, taking him to a salon etc., because he likes her, and she’s exploiting the poor soul. Vikrant is in love with a woman who’s not over her ex, and in the end, as a female character of Ranjan’s male verse, she ends up sleeping with her ex, and poor little Vikrant has been ‘used’ and abandoned. And that’s just one of his films. The other two are even worse.

3. “A woman always comes and ruins the equation between male besties”

Ranjan took the pathetic ‘Bros Before Hoes’ quote too seriously and made a full-fledged movie on it. Sonu Ke Titu Ki Sweety is about a manchild (Sunny Singh), an insecure best friend (Karthik Aryan) and the demonic woman ( Nushrratt Bharuccha) the manchild is about to marry. When the manchild is getting married, the insecure best friend comes and locks horns with the girl this manchild is about to marry because he thinks she’s too good to be true, and yes, you guessed it right. By the end of the movie, in Ranjan’s male verse. The insecure best friend was right. He saves the man child from this demon of a woman he was about to marry, once again who was in it for money with a bros anthem playing “Tera yaar hoon main” in Arijit Singh’s voice. Aww right?

Every Luv Ranjan movie has shown time and again how women break up a group of male best friends and make their lives miserable, making them fall out with their friends, and by the end, every man dumps the woman, and they enjoy friendship again. Yay Self righteous bullshit!

4. “Every woman has only one agenda in life: to change a man”

According to Mr Ranjan, every woman in the world will change everything about you, try to make you a person you are not, and try to control you in every way possible. They will manipulate you, make you think like them, and act like a puppy. Do you remember the pathetic “Ban Gaya Kutta” background score in the Punchnama movies and that puppy cry that was so funny to us as kids? Well, guess what? It’s just plain sad now. Does Ranjan, at this point, really wants us to believe that every single problem a man faces starts and ends with the woman in his life?

5. “Problem ye hai ki wo ladki hai – the ‘problem’ is that she is a girl!”…is the ultimate monologue or the war cry of the male character

Listen to this rant by Karthik Aaryan’s character – “problem ye hai ki wo ladki hai”.

Every Luv Ranjan movie has a rant where the male character has a nervous breakdown and keeps on talking about how all the women in the world have a problem with everything they do, as if a woman only exists to make the man in her life miserable. They will not let them live in peace and most importantly tell them “marne se pehle bataya kyu nahi, message kyun nahi kia?” Well, it’s a norm in Ranjan’s male verse.

Published here first.

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