A director would just pick a comedian up and throw in 30 minutes per movie in which the comedian can do all that he wants with his own ‘team’ to tickle the funny bones. The comedy has little or nothing to do with the progress or flow of the story, and comes in more like in the form of an advertisement break for those who are watching. And more often than not, the comedian takes bashings and insults so that someone can crinkle with laughter.

Want an example of what kind of comedy I’m referring? Well, it’s the one we are so accustomed to in the Tamil-language medium. Take last year’s Villu for example.

Vadivelu arrives at a foreign airport in Munich and the airport officers brand it as a ‘monkey gone loose’. Why such disintegration of Vadivelu’s character? If I was him and was reading a script, I’d rather be offended that the script directly mocks my looks more than anything. I just have to appear there with a funny face, and they would brand me a monkey, and people would laugh. Simple.

What is it there for Vadivelu to ‘act’?

This supposed ‘format’ is exhausting for those who are hoping that this industry can move forward for the better, and there are plenty of instances where good movies are being held back or disrupted by the film-makers rigid attempts to attempt the ‘must’ comedy with the ‘must’ comedian.

But there is a wind of change in the horizon. The flock of young comedians is slowly turning the tables around. A friend of mine once told me she never actually enjoyed watching Santhanam as a comedian but rather preferred him as an ‘actor’- as portrayed in Arai 305il Kadavul.

Probably that’s where the line should be drawn. We should all remember that those who are in front of the camera acting out their roles are all actors by profession, and there’s no argument as well in the fact that all the comedians are very capable actors in fact. But lest the blame should fall on our film-makers for repeatedly exploiting the comedian market and extracting all from comedians and giving back very little to them in terms of recognition.

We have our laughs, producers have their money, and comedians (more often than not aspiring actors who have been in and around the industry for years) have their spotlight. But there is something more than that. They are caliber actors, some of them even miles better than the crop of ‘heroes’ that we have in our industry.

The recently released Boss Engira Baskaran is a great example of how to actually utilize comedians in the best way possible. Make the comedians act in the movie. Make them part of it. And do not degrade their characters. In BEB, Arya’s character was at times portrayed as even more useless than that of Santhanam’s. Such direct involvement for comedians benefits both the quality of the movie and also their purpose of presence in the flick.

Another commendable example in this respect is director Simbu Devan, who has long shown a strong appreciation to quality comedy, in the way he had attempted something as refreshingly funny as in Irumbu Kottai…

There isn’t much of a change in the industry, but there is a positive wind now, and it is imperative that film-makers ride on this new wave as soon as possible rather than just throwing the same sink at us again and again.

Humor, mind you, comes with a touch of intelligence as well. Only then does it have an everlasting impact. The slapstick comedy that we have been treated to in this industry for years have hardly been intelligent; they had a very simple formula to which the film-makers adhered to. In BEB and Irumbu Kottai for instance, the comic parts are written meticulously. And when you treat comedy with that respect, even the smallest aspects can bring about laughter.

Take for example Simbu Devan’s simple yet intelligent move to name the evil village as Usapuram in Irumbu Kottai. A smart reference to USA in the purest sense and with that one panning of a shot, laughter is already evoked without trying too hard, and without degrading any characters.

Scenes in BEB too showed a class in terms of writing and dialogue delivery. Hardly any spoken dialogues were vulgar or demeaning any character in the film. In fact, the comedian is given the right to throw insults at the ‘hero’ for his shortcomings.

My kudos to Arya and his production team for boldly going against the regular convention of hero-comedian dynamics through BEB, and with Irumbu Kottai releasing not that long ago, we can be assured a new brand of humor is growing in Kollywood. But whether the audience of Tamil cinema would accept it or would revert to the old, clown-like comedy remains to be seen.

Ram Anand (Malaysia)
ram.observer88@gmail.com

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