Comedy is tough to excel at – this statement has been said by most veterans of the genre. Yet, we’ve had jewels like Golmaal (old), Chupke Chupke, etc which have us in splits even today.

However, when you look at the comedies today, all we have is slapstick comedies which rely heavily on silly characters, things going wildly haywire, gay jokes and sexual innuendos.

The current movies are usually described as a one-time watch. They simply fail to make you laugh twice or have dialogues worth memorising. Remember Chupke Chupke’s famous, ‘Go ko hum goo kyun nahin bolte’? You don’t get that anymore.

Nowadays you have films like Dhamaal, All the Best, Housefull 2, which more or less have the same story line. There is just too much going on and too many characters with a bucketful of cheap and vulgar humour thrown in.

Comedy today has lost its sensibility, and has become very immature and crude. There aren’t any comedies today that can become the classics of tomorrow, save a few, like Hera Pheri (not the sequel though). None of them linger with you, or make you laugh at their mere memory. You wouldn’t really want to buy a DVD, because their clones keep turning out anyways.

This trend is not only a trait of our movie industry, but of our Indian television serials too. I remember watching a few Indian television serials as a teen like Sunday Ke Sunday, Dil Vil Pyar Vyar, and the more recent, Sarabhai vs Sarabhai. These had their quirky characters but along with that they had a very strong script. The dialogues were funny and complimented the situation perfectly. Moreover, none of the characters were exaggerated although they were unique.

You don’t have serials like these anymore. You have some like Taarak Mehta Ka Oolta Chashma, which has funny, but too exaggerated characters. Moreover, the script in itself is not that strong.

A funny character without good dialogues doesn’t seem that entertaining after a while. Also, as the name suggests, it was supposed to be based on looking at things differently. However, that essence of the plot has been long forgotten.

Although slapstick comedy is fun and light, I wish we had more sensible humour in movies and television. Why should a character be dumb to crack jokes or be weird? Why can’t we have characters like Chandler of F.R.I.E.N.D.S. who is normal but is great with sarcasm?

When I look at the unbelievable characters on screen, whose antics fail to elicit even a smile, I often wonder, ‘Where has all the sensible comedy gone’?