Comedy is getting vulgar: Aatish Kapadia

NEW DELHI - Writer-director Aatish Kapadia, who won appreciation from critics for tickling audiences’ funny bones with his directorial debut “Khichdi-The Movie”, feels comedy has become vulgar.

The film, the big screen version of Kapadia’s hit comic serial “Khichdi”, retained the essence of the characters and the only change one found was that the fun elemets were upgraded for the big screen viewers.

“Comedy has getting vulgar nowadays. A lot of double meaning dialogues are being used due to which the essence of real comedy is getting lost somewhere. Our movie is an attempt to bring that aspect of comedy back,” Aatish, who also entertained television audiences with “Baa Bahu Aur Baby”, told IANS.

“Moreover, the characterisation in such films is also not good. There are one-dimensional characters and anybody can fit into it. However, ‘Khichdi-The Movie’, has a completely character-based comedy. No one can replace Hansa or Praful or Babuji,” he added.

“Khichdi-The Movie” earned Rs.55 million in the opening weekend despite the fact that it released with biggies like “Endhiran” and “Anjaana Anjaani”.

Aatish says it was his dream project. “The film is closer to my heart as it is my first film as a director. All the characters are closer to my heart and its like a dream come true.”

Aatish also revealed that there was a lot of fun on the sets of the movie.

“All of us share great working relationship together. We used to have a lot of fun on the movie sets. There was just laughter and only laughter. We used to improvise a lot on the sets, which made it even more fun,” he said.

Kapadia roped in Supriya Pathak Kapoor as Hansa, Rajeev Mehta as Praful, J.D. Mathejia as Himanshu and Anang Desai as Babuji in the film. The only actor he replaced was Vandana Pathak, who played Jayshree. Nimisha Vakharia essayed the role in the big screen version of the series.

“Nimisha has worked really hard to get the character and its attitude right. She had started preparing for the role even before the film went on the floors. Although there were apprehensions among the star cast, but once she read her dialogues everybody was convinced she would pull off the role well,” said Aatish.