Things are going to get a little Crazy at the cinemas as Madhumita Vijay's home production Kola Kolaya Mundhirika , a comedy starring Karthik Kumar and Jayaram, releases today.
Madhumita, who made her debut with the Parthipan-starrer Vallamai Tharayo , believes she has a winner, a laugh riot with story and dialogues by Crazy Mohan.
“After Vallamai Tharayo , I wanted to do something entirely different. I approached Crazy Mohan and asked him about doing a comedy. He pitched this story. We've been family friends for a very long time. I worked on the screenplay and he wrote the dialogues,” says the young filmmaker, who studied filmmaking at New York Film Academy in the United States (She even worked as crew on the sets of The Pirates of the Caribbean ).
“At the end of the day, I don't want to be identified with one kind of genre. People think women directors can make only women-centric films. Since my first film was a serious, women-oriented subject, I wanted to break the mould and prove to the audience that I could do another genre,” she says, justifying her jump from the serious to the other end of the spectrum.
A treasure hunt
Kola Kolaya Mundhirika is about two cons (Karthik Kumar and Shikha) who are constantly outwitting each other until they realise the need to work together to get a diamond. “The film is like a treasure hunt. A comic caper with the two cons and other comic villains after the same diamond and an Inspector Clouseau kind of a bumbling cop played by Jayaram.”
“For the leads, I wanted someone who didn't have an image. Karthik Kumar was nice enough to audition in spite of having done so many films. The men had to audition with lines from Michael Madhana Kama Rajan and also tell us why we should give them our chair since the film involves a diamond hidden inside a chair. We wanted to see how they were with dialogues and how they were with basic improvisation. About 50 guys and 30 girls auditioned before we decided on Karthik and Shikha.”
The biggest challenge for Madhumita was to do justice to Crazy Mohan's lines.
“It's easier to do a serious subject because people will relate to it at some level, but with comedy, it either works or not — Yes or No. When we were shooting, there were parts we found hilarious that didn't seem that funny at the editing table. So we had to understand his (Crazy Mohan's) kind of comedy. We watched all his films to understand what kind of cuts worked and what kind of shots were needed to make the lines work for laughs.”
Who has she made the film for? “It will appeal to and is meant for anyone who can laugh,” she says.
