Comedy films with double innuendos a shortcut: Anees Bazmee

Credited with Bollywood's popular laugh riots "No Entry" and "Welcome", filmmaker Anees Bazmee says comedy is the toughest genre to work on for a writer, and when a movie is loaded with double entendres, it's merely a "shorcut".

Of late, the Hindi film industry has witnessed a surge in comedy entertainers, but a sex comedy laced with sexual innuendos seem to be the current favourite flavour. Bazmee is not all for it.

"There are some good comedy films even now, but comedy films which are double-meaning and are a shortcut. I don't want to make them and I don't want to watch them. I don't want to even say whether they are good or bad... My personal choice is to work around buffoonery," Bazmee told IANS in an interview.

The maker of movies like "Singh Is Kinng", "Thank You", "Ready" and "Welcome Back", said he likes to spread laughter with something as simple as someone making a funny face.

"It should be a situational comedy, and dialogues should be clean... A situation could be a tragedy, but you can find comedy in it. In 'Welcome', there was a scene where people are hanging from a tree, and that made people laugh a lot.

"Comedy is the most difficult genre to write, but it's important. People are leading such stressful lives and people are forgetting how to be happy. So making them laugh has become important, but tough," said Bazmee, who is now set to work on the fun-filled" "Mubarakan" and the edge-of-the-seat thriller "Aankhen 2".

He has a stellar cast to work on in both the projects. "Mubarakan" has real life uncle and nephew Anil Kapoor and Arjun Kapoor in the same frame and they will be playing Sikh characters complete with turbans. And the cast for "Aankhen 2" will be led by megastar Amitabh Bachchan, with whom Bazmee is glad to be working with for the first time.

"'Mubarakan' is a very special film. I'm directing Arjun for the first time. Like the title suggests, it's a movie about happiness, it is fun-filled, it has a wedding at its core and there's a lot of fun and humour in it," Bazmee said, and added that he hopes to complete the project by March next year in time for its July 28, 2017 release.

His second release for 2017 will be "Aankhen 2". It will release around Diwali next year, but a lot of work for the movie has already been done, he says.

"I feel the most important thing to do is to write the script. Once that's done and if you have the actor's dates, you can manage it well. However, I have never worked on two films together. I have made only one film at a time. But for these movies, we have a clear-cut program," he said when asked how he plans to juggle between the projects.

"Mubarakan" has a long schedule of one and half months, but a location is yet to be zeroed in on. Maximum portions for it will be shot at a foreign location and the rest will happen in Mumbai and Punjab.

"It's a very well-planned film. 'Aankhen 2' is also a big film and has several people, but there's a plan in place for that as well. I think both films can be handled easily because both the scripts are written already."

--IANS

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