Where is the Great Indian Comedy?

The 2020s have not been able to produce a generational comedy. What’s changed? Actor Pratik Gandhi, from Madgaon Express (2024), says that it’s the audiences. The inherent nature of comedies is that they offend, but “today, anything can offend anybody. And in comedy, you have to just let loose. Only then, it’s fun,” says Gandhi. “Censorship has also become wild,” Gandhi says, “You’ll hear things like, ‘Don’t say sex, instead say sambhog, then it’s fine’.” 

PIC/PINTEREST@HowdyWestern

Actor Abhishek Banerjee, who was last seen in Stree 2 (2024), also agrees. “The 1990s comedy style is no longer funny. I don’t think today’s generation will enjoy it the same way,” Banerjee says, “Comedies like the ones David Dhawan and Govinda made, or Andaz Apna Apna (1994), or Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro — those are evergreen.”

Madgaon Express (2024). File pic

What does it take to make an evergreen comedy? “They have satire. They have irony. I think what we lack today is satire,” Banerjee answers. As soon as we realised not-so-politically-correct humour doesn’t work, we stopped trying to find other forms of comedy. Gandhi adds, “Comedy has many sub-genres, and we still haven’t explored them fully. For example, survival comedy. Most of the time, films fall into slapstick comedy. That’s usually the first instinct. But there are many more genres as well.”

Crew (2024). PIC/PINTEREST@Bruce Sterling

Banerjee says, “Situational comedy is becoming more important than dialogue-based comedy. It’s not about saying a funny line — it’s about being in a serious situation and saying something completely unexpected. Layering that with intelligence helps even more.”

The 2020s have also been the decade of the Reel. Banerjee says, “I keep watching comedy Reels and they’re genuinely funny.” When people already have their appetite for funny filled on their phones, why should they come to the cinema for it? Gandhi says, “I never thought a two-hour film would have to compete with a 30-second Reel. But here we are.”

Stree 2 (2024). PIC/PINTEREST

In the last few years, one comedy has broken into the 100-crore club — Crew. Director Rajesh A Krishnan tells us, “If you open social media, you’ll get a laugh. And Instagram doesn’t even need a subscription.” 

Throughout the country too, laughter is not dying. “It seems like comedies are reducing but how much comedy content are you actually also consuming from Kerala? If you isolate comedy films coming out of the Hindi film industry, then it starts feeling like there is less comedy. Otherwise, people have been making comedies,” he says, “The scope of comedy has also changed. It’s crossed genres now like comedy-thriller, action-comedy, or horror-comedy.”

Pratik Gandhi

In the Hindi film industry, comedy films are surviving on franchise fame. “If we think from the producer’s perspective, franchises have been working well,” Krishnan says, “Sometimes standalone projects work so well that they get turned into franchises.”

The onset of OTT has meant that the theatre is saved for larger-than-life spectacles. So why should you step out to watch a comedy today? “I always feel like great comedies are a tool or even a weapon to critique the establishment. It has a softer touch to do it. And it’s one that lasts with you.” From the times of the Angry Young Men, films have centred around the common man and his problems. Today, he is no longer at the core of our cinema, instead he is a “big, bearded, angry man on screen,” says Mirchandani.

Karan Mirchandani

Mirchandani also points out, “Films today exist in a kind of hyper-reality. They’re not rooted in a specific time or context. Because the moment you ground them — show real problems or systems — you’re also making a critique, and that’s something people are avoiding.”

A lot of comedies like Andaz Apna Apna, though were box office flops, found a second life on DVD. “That pipeline is gone today,” Mirchandani adds. Nothing comes close to a theatre for Gandhi, though. He says, “Any comedy film works best in theatres. Three hundred to 500 people laughing together — it is very, very contagious. You have a lot of fun in those two hours.”

Paisa bolta hai

Is there money to be made with a theatrical comedy?

The comedy genre is an evolving one, says trade analyst Taran Adarsh. “Right now, we’re seeing a lot of horror comedies. But the out-and-out comedies excelled by Akshay Kumar and before him the Govinda-David Dhawan style really worked. But there has been a vacuum since then.”

Taran Adarsh

But is there money to be made in this genre? “Lots. Who doesn’t want to laugh, smile, and come out of a film feeling happy? That’s what cinema is about.” Then why is the genre slowing down? “The market scenario has changed. Profits, losses, hits, and flops dictate the industry more strongly now. Especially since the stakes are higher,” he says, “Actors also tend to follow what’s working because everyone wants to stay relevant, popular, and deliver hits.”

All hope is not lost though. “In the last couple of years, Madgaon Express has done well,” with a box office collection of '49 crore, “Crew (2024) was a smashing success,” as it sits happily in the '100-crore club with a box office run of '157 crore. 

Comedy is no funny business

All sources tell us that making a comedy film is the toughest genre to crack

Niren Bhatt, who’s written films like Stree 2 (2024), Bala (2019), and Bhediya (2022), says, “Comedy is highly subjective. What lands for you, might not land for me.” He adds that what appears effortless on screen is often the hardest to write. “You can’t just have characters delivering one-liners. That’s stand-up. It has to be woven into a story, with conflict, world-building, and character arcs,” he explains.

Abhishek Banerjee

“You might write 10 lines and only one works,” he says, noting how audiences respond differently to the same jokes. While some enjoy meta humour or wordplay, others dismiss it as overdone or “too literary”. For actors too, comedy is all about instinct. Pratik Gandhi says, “All other emotions have a range. On a scale of one to 10, you can adjust. But in comedy, if it has to land at two, it has to land at exactly two. Unlike drama, where intensity can fluctuate, comedy requires precision down to 0.0001 and years of riyaz.”

Abhishek Banerjee adds that the genre leaves actors exposed. “In comedy, you’re on your own. You have your dialogues, your co-actors of course, but timing is everything. Nobody can teach you comic timing. If you don’t have the funny bone, it will fail.”

Comedies from before would mix social commentary with jokes vs The 2020s haven’t been able to deliver generational comedies like years before.

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