Comedy is very serious business. It’s relatively easier to bring a lump to the throat than make audiences chuckle leave alone have them rolling in the aisles. Some of the most talented directors are wary of even trying the genre as a full-length feature. Very few take it up as a challenge just to prove they can pull it off. There’s also something magical about comedy where acting is concerned because it’s all about reacting with a classic sense of timing. I consider any actor without a flair for comedy as overrated especially when they’re called versatile. I know this will elicit an outcry but Dilip Kumar and Mammootty are two on my list. You probably need a streak of madness and an absolute lack of self consciousness. The right body language and razor sharp repartee are basic necessities but an inept co-star can ruin your best efforts in a scene.
Hindi cinema cannot boast too many full-length comedies compared to the South. Well, yes you can say it’s four languages against one, but even if you take each language individually this holds good. You don’t need more than the fingers in your hands to count them. I mean the really good ones and of course the lists may vary depending on taste. Now this is not an exercise in comparison. Personally, ‘Chalti Ka Naam Gaadi’ comes to mind if you take the earliest memories of a really good full length comedy. About three brothers who run a garage and own a moody jalopy with a mind of it’s own, the film boasted of three real life brothers enacting the roles. Kishore Kumar playing Manu deals with a misogynist brother and a damsel in distress who bowls him over. He decides to take on a goon who’s after his ladylove’s riches. The three brothers have a ball in scenes that are mostly situational. Kishore is first rate and there’s Madhubala with her irresistible charm and eloquent eyes. She even calls him ‘pagla’ and it’s as if he knows. It was a complete package with terrific songs too. Among the brothers you feel Anup Kumar never got his due after an efficient performance. Then came ‘Half Ticket’ an absolute riot with Kishoreda at his craziest best. He was a big fan of Hollywood films and this was based on a 1955 comedy ‘You Are Never Too Young’. There’s a vast difference between childish and childlike. Kishoreda was the latter in real life and it just reflected in his performances. About the son of an industrialist who ironically doesn’t have money to buy a train ticket while trying to escape his father’s nagging, he decides to act like a child to buy a half ticket. In the guise of Munna he’s used as a mule by a smuggler without his knowledge. Comedy calls for a total lack of self-consciousness and that’s the reason Kishore revels be it as a kid or in drag. The film also boasted of the great singer crooning in male and female voices in the song, ‘Aake Seedhi Lage Dil Pe’ when Lata Mangeshkar played truant. Comedy is about impersonation, mistaken identities and characters caught in situations which need presence of mind to wriggle out of. It’s also about lying convincingly and adding more to justify. Hrishikesh Mukerjee was a master in this genre. His ‘Chupke Chupke’, ‘Golmaal’, and ‘Khubsoorat’ were terrific with even the watered down versions like ‘Naram Garam’ and ‘Jhooti’ passing muster. I feel ‘Chupke Chupke’ about a man pretending to be a driver was the genesis for ‘Golmaal’. There’s the ‘Shudh’ Hindi, impersonation and of course David as the go-between. The casting was always perfect. Everyone had a well etched character and contributed to the comedy.
Andaz Apna Apna
There was a charm and innocuousness that made you emerge from the theatre with a broad smile. ‘Jaane Bhi Do Yaaron’ was a comic caper that proved that there was more to Naseeruddin Shah and Om Puri’s personality than purveying poverty. They had a ball and so did the audiences.
The comedy in Hindi cinema turned to double entendre and was mostly offensive thanks to Kader Khan and Shakti Kapoor and their loud antics. They were ‘comedy tracks’ mostly in remakes of Telugu pot-boilers. Now in the early nineties, the talented Rajkumar Santoshi decided to explore his flair for the funny stuff after ‘Ghayal’ and ‘Damini’. In what was considered a casting coup, he signed Aamir and Salman Khan, added Mehmood, Deven Varma, Paresh Rawal and Shakti Kapoor and churned out ‘Andaz Apna Apna’. The film, in the making for three years for various reasons other than the ego hassles of the two leading men was released to lukewarm response. Various reasons were bandied from lack of adequate publicity to competition from other films. Nothing can save mediocrity and I’m just baffled that this utterly overrated film is being hailed as a cult classic.
There were even rumours, just recently but thankfully and quickly quelled that there was going to be a sequel. Its 25 years since the film was first released and a revisit reiterates the fact that not more than a couple of scenes evoked a smile. About two vagabonds out to court and marry a rich heiress the enterprise is loud and garish. If it was planned as a tribute to the films of the sixties, especially the Shammi Kapoor kind, it fails miserably. Definitely inspired by ‘Dirty Rotten Scoundrels’ the humour is forced. It’s as if Santoshi is being prodded to make every sequence funnier. Unlike a Hrishida film none of the character artistes get well etched roles. The basic problem is that the two leading men Aamir and Salman have little or no flair for the funny stuff. It’s not about making faces, rolling your eyes and acting like there are ants in your pants. There’s a lot of promise though in the plot which is squandered by an over enthusiastic director piling on twists. It’s only Paresh Rawal who emerges artistically unscathed. The effort to club this film with the few classics I’ve mentioned seems blasphemous.
Anyway ‘Andaz Apna Apna’.
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