Bizarre is Funny!!

Now all of you- Ok, Most of you- Forget it, some of you know how I love funny stuff; about how I rave about PG Wodehouse, Kalki, Devan, Douglas Adams and Sujatha.

I envy these people who can make others laugh. It is the MOST difficult thing in life, don’t you think? With entertainment overload, two things have become very difficult for creators of any kind:

a. Scaring People - Fiction has almost lost all its ability to evoke fear these days for reality is scarier almost all the time!

b. Making people laugh - Now there are channels dedicated to comedy, but people are just weary. They watch it like they watch news. Forget making you laugh, many of the funny sequences don’t even make you smile!!

There was a time when a clown could make people laugh merely by slipping on a banana peel. Then talkies came and comedians spoke smart dialogues to make people laugh. Later one guy started hitting another and people laughed and after that one guy constantly got hit by others and people laughed. It takes a different kind of genius to make people laugh (and it requires a little less ego on my part to actually laugh at a joke )!!

Different things make us laugh at different times. One thing that made us laugh when we were kids seems extremely annoying when we turn into adults (and I am assuming this happens sooner or later in all our lives, although for some later than some others !!). On the contrary, some things that seemed pointless or sometimes even sad, may make you laugh a few years then on.

Bizarre and weird stuff may make us wonder, or may scare us, but very rarely they are also funny. Of late, I see myself drawn more and more to such twisted humour. Here are 3 such movies, where the bizarre situations make you laugh in spite of yourself.

a. Arsenic and Old Lace -

For a lot of us, who have always associated death/murder/torture etc with gloom (which it actually is!!), a movie where they are used to comic effect is actually a pleasant surprise. I am not talking about movies/books, where the situation is sad or gory and one takes pleasure in that, for that would only mean the person is some kind of a sadist.

The 1944 film Arsenic and Old Lace is a good example. This stars my other favourite hero of B&W English Movies - Cary Grant (the first one being James Stewart). Remarkably handsome, Cary Grant was great in comedy too. He, like John Cleese, was wonderfully funny with his facial contortions and physical humour.

Arsenic and Old Lace is the story of Mortimer Brewster and his two ’sweet’ aunts Abby and Martha. Mortimer, a chronic bachelor, finally falls in love and gets married to Elaine Harper, his neighbour. Mortimer and Elaine return home to get ready for their honeymoon to Niagara. While visiting his aunts he finds a corpse and thinks his crazy brother Teddy (who thinks he is Theodore Roosevelt) is responsible. He tells his aunts that his brother must be hospitalized before he kills more people. The women explain to him that they and not Teddy were responsible for the murder. In fact they consider the murder an act of charity towards the elderly and lonely gentleman! They go on to reveal that they have already murdered 12 other lonely people by poisoning their wine with arsenic and a few other poisons!! All the corpses have been buried in the basement, where Teddy thinks he is digging the ‘Panama Canal’. Matters are further complicated when Mortimer’s long lost brother - the cruel murderer Jonathan and his accomplice arrive at the house to dump their latest murder victim.

If you thought the plot sounded more like that of a murder mystery or a slasher flick, you need to definitely watch the movie. It is a laugh riot from start to finish!! The aunts are adorable and the Teddy character is insanely funny! All actors seem to have realized that they are a part of a madcap comedy and have shed all inhibitions and are happily crazy - a must for any comedy movie)!!

b. Ek Chalis ki last local - This is a 2007 Hindi film. This is one of the best dark comedies to have been made in Bollywood (a long long time after Kundan Shah’s brilliant Jaane bhi do yaaro)!! This movie once again proves that Abhay Deol is one of the most dependable actors in Hindi cinema. Say what you want about his acting skills etc, his choice of roles is simply superb and unmatched. Look at his list so far and you will find that every movie is unique!! Neha Dhupia is a mystery woman in Hindi cinema. She is not beautiful, she cannot act much, but she features in most of the offbeat movies in Hindi cinema!

Ek Chalis ki last local, is the story of Nilesh, a call center executive, who misses that last local train (at, what else, 1:40 am) and has to while his time away till the first train in the morning. He meets Madhu (Neha Dhupia) who has also missed the train and both decide to loiter around till dawn. The people they meet, the experiences they undergo form the rest of the story. Trust me, it is very hard to describe the story as it is a series of incidents and every time you think you have figured out what is going to happen next, you are thrown a surprise twist!! If your mind is as twisted as mine, you are likely to enjoy this movie!!

c. No Smoking - Well, how do I even begin to describe this movie! This 2007 movie by Anurag Kashyap cannot be explained at all. Many film-buffs read a lot of philosophy in the movie. People found subtexts for each scene. The news about the movie, more than the movie itself created so much hype, that I was a little intimidated by it all.

I am known for being a complete knucklehead when it comes to ‘intellectual’ movies. My rants against unintelligible pseudo-intellectual climax-less french movies are well known (among a couple of cousins!). But a cousin who knew something about me recommended this movie. Added to this motivation was the fact that I had watched AK’s Black Friday and thought it was simply brilliant. If a moviemaker could turn a facts based book on the Mumbai riots into a gripping movie, it surely meant he had a lot of promise!!

As I started watching No Smoking, I decided to clear my mind from all preconceived notions about the movie and its stars. Frankly I am not a fan of John Abraham - for his looks or his ‘acting’ talent!! I thoroughly enjoyed the movie!! Seriously, I had initially thought (from the title) that the movie was about the evils of smoking but the movie took me by surprise of the pleasant variety!! I could almost visualize AK convincing the producers about the ‘moral’ of the movie, all the while laughing evilly to himself!! I even remember the interviews by John Abraham prior to the release of the movie - how the story impressed him and how it was ‘not preachy’ but still had a moral!! Who knows what he understood of the story when it was narrated to him!! Maybe he understood it all and he was part of the con or maybe he didn’t understand anything and simply surrendered to the director’s will!!

The end of the movie was a little confusing, but overall the movie was very engaging and funny. If I tell you the parts I found funny, you may recommend a psychiatrist for me! Seriously the fact that one of the punishments for smoking include cutting off the person’s finger. If that sounds cruel on paper, you have to see it on screen!! Ranvir Shourey, that superbly spontaneous actor plays Abbas Tyrewala and there is a B&W sequence (titled ‘Kyon ki bachpan bhi kabhi naughty tha’) involving John and Ranvir, supposedly in their teen-age, that is wickedly funny!

Much as I try to describe how much these movies made me laugh, it is difficult to express it all in words. Try watching them and don’t blame me, if you don’t like them, because I warned you, somewhere in the post, that my mind is growing more and more twisted these days!!