Dimaag ki Khichri

After watching Khichri the movie today, I have just one formal appeal to MTA (Mumbai Tapori Association) to rename their famous catchphrase dimaag ka dahi to Dimaag ki Khichri in honour of this movie. I went into the movie with very mixed reviews and did not know what to expect. I was quite blown away with the comedy as it was far above the expectation. With khichri comes a new genre of clean but sick comedy to Bollywood. I have always felt the serious deficit of good humour on Indian screen (TV or big screen).

Govinda single handedly carried comedy on his shoulders (may be his pelvic) during the 90s and created a niche for himself. David Dhawan and Govinda was a pair to watch out for! (May be still is) Govinda handed the torch to Khilari Akhsay who also did carve out some excellent stuff before he became monotonous. After that came a new genre of comedy – “dimmag ghar mein rakh kar aao” comedy. There were a flurry of comedy movies that hit the screens but only a few created a lasting mark. Their trade mark was loud/slapstick humour, where the plot revolved around mistaken identity leading to situational chaos. Funnily enough most of movies where comedy was not the central theme had better comedy than the so called comedy movies. For me a good comedy is one which has a repeat value and I therefore rate the 70s era of Hrisikesh Mukherjee the best. But there is a silver lining as there is definitely a paradigm shift in the current movies. May be going forward we will see people making comedy on the territories they have not explored enough like intelligent comedy, adult (not cheap) humour or even Spoof.

In the world of Idiot box (in India it deserves to be called that) whatever little progress was made has been retracted. The prime time is full of the Saas and their Bahus and their never ending fights with fulltu melodrama and top it all their reactions, their Reactions, their REACTIONS (had to put in 3 times). I have never met a single soul who watches these serials and not say, “dhat! aisa  kabhi hota hai kya ? kya bakwaas dikha raha hai” and next day go back and see the same stuff all over again. (I wish I could get some tips from those producers to build a reader base who would say, “dhat! kya bakwaas blog likhta hai” but come back to read my blog again.)