Comedy keeps Bollywood Box Office ticking
Noreen Aslam

NEW DELHI—Comedy is certainly the flavour of the season in Bollywood with every other comic caper making a killing at the turnstiles and dime-a-dozen dream merchants scrambling over one another to board the bandwagon. Among the recent to hit the box office is “Dhamaal”.
No sooner was David Dhawan’s pop-up comedy flick, “Partner”, declared a hit, another veteran of the genre, Indra Kumar, seems poised to hit a homerun with his latest offering “Dhamaal”, which released Friday. Initial reports of the film starring Sanjay Dutt, Riteish Deshmukh, Arshad Warsi, Javed Jaffrey and Ashish Chaudhary are pretty encouraging.
Unlike the recently released crass comedy “Budha Mar Gaya” and many offerings that vend vulgarity in the name of humour, “Dhamaal” is being appreciated by the gentry as a relatively clean, plot-driven comedy. In a year that has witnessed crumbling of a number of box-office formulae including the embarrassing box-office drubbing awarded to mega-budget Yash Raj Films-productions “Ta Ra Rum Pum” and “Jhoom Barabar Jhoom”, the industry has been iffy about what will work.
The films that have worked at the box-office this year have been dramatically unlike the usual Bollywood potboilers. The first blockbuster was Mani Ratnam’s “Guru” loosely based on the life of Indian industrialist Dhirubhai Ambani. Then came the sleeper hit “Bheja Fry” that turned Hindi film industry’s economics on its head. And “Chak De! India” that is ruling the marquees now is like nothing ever seen before in Bollywood boulevard.
For the box-office, laughter has indeed proved to be the best medicine and tickling the funny bone has become serious money-spinning formula. “Partner” reportedly made Rs.300 million in its opening week alone. For Dhawan, the king of comedy, who returned to wielding the megaphone after a two-year break adapting Hollywood’s “Hitch” with the perfect twosome of Salman Khan and Govinda, had paid off big time.
The multiplexes and movie theatres have been chock-full of recent comedy releases - “Bhagam Bhag”, “Golmaal”, “Hey Babyy” and “Bheja Fry”. The most remarkable success story is that of “Bheja Fry” - made on a modest budget of just Rs.5.5 million. The film with Vinay Pathak and Rajat Kapoor in the lead grossed more that five times its cost and has others hoping to repeat its success.
“We Indians have a herd mentality. If, for any reason, one particular comedy movie works, everyone else will be eager to cash in. The next thing you know is every director in Bollywood is making a funny movie! Thus, the success of a particular genre plays a big role. Besides, comedy is a great stress-buster,” says “Bheja Fry” producer Sunil Doshi. Following closely on the heels of “Partner” was debutant director Sajid Khan’s “Heyy Babyy” with Akshay Kumar, Fardeen Khan, Riteish Deshmukh and Vidya Balan providing comic relief.
Though the film did not put the cash registers on fire, it did do reasonably good business. “I am not sure if comedy is box-office medicine, but I can honestly tell you that making people laugh is more fruitful than trying to move them,” Sajid aptly said in an interview before the film’s release.
The month of September has other comic capers in the pipeline.
Priyadarshan, who is credited for rewriting the roles of comedy in Bollywood, will be presenting “Dhol” and “Bhul Bhulaiya” and Sanjay Sharma will be bearing his “Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro”. All these films have actors who have proven their yen for comedy.
Starting from the veterans like Sanjay Dutt, Akshay, Arshad Warsi and Javed Jaffrey, the newer crop of actors like Riteish, Ashish Chaudhary and Tusshar Kapoor will be seen at their comic best through the month.