Dil Garden Garden Ho Gaya

Comedy is tough to do. Every year Bollywood makes hundreds of movies. Some aim directly for our funny bones. Some like Welcome to Sajjanpur and Rocket Singh are bang on the money. Some miss the mark (Life Partner, Do Knot Disturb).

Then there are some movies that fail on all aspects. Either the film-maker is trying too hard or he is not trying at all. These are the movies you want to watch over and over again. They are not meant to be comedies. They just are so insane and completely senseless, you marvel at them.

“That’s the law of inverse goodness,” says Suresh Venkat, executive producer at Network 18. “They are movies so bad that they are good. It’s like light travelling in a black hole. Usually light travels in a straight line but the power of gravity in a black hole is so strong that it curves on itself. The movies can’t be moderately bad. Any film Fardeen Khan acts in, it’s bad. They have to be really bad. These are the Rajnikant movies like Sivaji,” adds Venkat.

You don’t tell anyone you watch these movies unless, of course, your friends enjoy these guilty pleasures as well. You wouldn’t go out and buy the DVD but if it plays on television, you’ll watch it. Again and again. You laugh out loud and it gets contagious. Soon, you can recite the dialogue along with the actors. It’s illogical, preposterous and improbable. Pretty soon you have your whole family watching with you.

“Look at Partner. Now Govinda and Salman Khan have a great sense of comic timing,” says Neha Sareen, TV show host and film critic. “The characters are completely cuckoo. As long as the film is ridiculous for its entire duration you can navigate through the movie. Salman Khan teaches Govinda how to dance. It can’t get more illogical than that.”

Actually it can. There was a film called Jaani Dushman: Ek Anokhi Kahaani that was written, produced and directed by Rajkumar Kohli. Made in 2002, he used the film to re-launch his son Armaan Kohli. The movie had a star cast a mile long: Akshay Kumar, Suniel Shetty, Sunny Deol, Arshad Warsi, Raj Babbar, Sonu Nigam, Rambha, Manisha Koirala and of course Kohli Jr. The movie lived up to its name. It was so anokhi that the actors could not understand what the hell was going on. One minute Akshay Kumar is in the hospital after a bad car accident, the next minute he’s piloting a boat on the high seas behind Armaan Kohli who, believe it or not, is running on water. Continuity, logic, even science or common sense be damned.

One superstar who has his kitsch library full is Shah Rukh Khan. Khan has more than his fair share of howlers: Ram Jaane, Trimurti, Duplicate, the list goes on. But my favourite SRK so-bad-it’s-good film is Hum Tumhare Hain Sanam. He shares screen space with Madhuri Dixit and Salman Khan, with Aishwarya Rai in a special appearance as Salman’s blind girlfriend. The movie made me retch the first time I saw it in the theatre in 2002. But it grew on me as Zee Cinema and Sony kept telecasting the movie. The scene that boggled my mind is the one in which newlyweds SRK and Dixit are in bed at night but she’s on the phone with Salman directing him on where to find stuff at his house. Why would a newlywed do that? Four of the biggest stars in India are in a film and the director didn’t know what to do with them. We will probably never get a chance to see them together again.

“Actors often act in these movies as a favour to someone,” says trade analyst Atul Mohan. “Take Jaani Dushman. Rajkumar Kohli was a great film-maker in his day. But film-makers have to evolve with the times and some haven’t,” he says.

All the biggest stars in India today cut their teeth on rubbish films. Aamir Khan and Juhi Chawla were together in Daulat Ki Jung, where an ensemble cast goes treasure hunting. Kader Khan plays an inspector who travels in a coffin drawn by a horse. Then you have Akshay Kumar’s International Khiladi, most notable for his hot shower scene with Rekha and his fight with WWE superstar Undertaker.

But the biggest star in these movies is our own Mithun-da. Any movie he’s starred in is so bad it’s good. And the most important fact about his movies is that you get to learn something from every film. Examples: A monkey can teach you how to fight ancient Indian martial arts. An army officer is so strong that he bores holes in walls with his index finger. If you fire a bullet straight into a brain tumour, the tumour dies but you live.

It doesn’t matter if you only watch films in multiplexes or single screen halls or have your own private screenings; I have yet to meet someone who doesn’t like Mithun movies.

So why spend a bomb going out to see movies in 3D? Just chill at home and enjoy these blockbusters.