Some consistency, por favor

The makers of OMG 2 have been very upset about the film being given an adult rating – and rightly so. Amit Rai’s film stars Pankaj Tripathi as Kanti, a devout Shaivite, and Akshay Kumar as a personification of the god Shiva. Kanti’s son is caught masturbating in school – an act into which he is bullied by his classmates.

When the teenager becomes near-suicidal, Kanti sues the school for having failed to include sex education in its curriculum. Akshay Kumar’s character turns up at opportune moments to give Kanti much-needed succour and advice.

Perhaps smarting from the Adipurush fiasco, where the outcry over misrepresentation of the Ramayana included anger at the Central Board of Film Certification’s oversight, the censors looked long and hard at OMG 2. Akshay Kumar’s character was described as a representative of Shiva, rather than Shiva himself, which is silly, given the character’s appearance and behaviour.

By restricting OMG 2 to adults, rather than giving it a UA rating, the censor board removed the film from the purview of teenagers or older children. Cinemas across India are notoriously lax about enforcing the adults-only rule, so there is hope that at least some adolescents sneaked in for a film partly aimed at their demographic.

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