Not quite funny

In an early scene, police inspector Bhoominathan (Bobby Simha) is asked by the police commissioner (K. S. Ravikumar) to use his famous interrogation technique to get an accused to spill the beans. When you learn that it involves some serious tickling, you know what to expect from the film. Of course, the fact that actor RJ Shiva, known for his comic roles, has written the dialogues is a big clue. For such a film to work, almost all the jokes need to be funny. The problem is you can’t quite say that about Aadama Jaichomada.

Picture yourself reading an average joke book. You flip page after page, reading the jokes, many of which barely evoke a smile. Just as you decide to try one last one before flinging the book away, you find a tickler that gets you laughing. Aadama Jaichomada is this joke book that surprises you with a witty line or funny joke just when you are resigned to expecting nothing.

All types of humour find their way into the film. You have a man forced to use a safety pin to keep his zipper in place. You have a woman whose one aim in life is to become wealthy so she can stop using public toilets. You have a policeman who works on the philosophy that if he waits long enough, the criminals will come to him. When asked how he justifies his monthly salary, he wryly comments “Waiting charge”. You also have an unattractive man who wants to make it big as a hero. Cue to some parodic scenes that show his acting ability or the lack of it.

This is a film about match fixing which, in aiming to succeed solely through wordplay, remains blissfully unmindful of screenplay. There are punning jokes, in the Crazy Mohan style, but they only serve as reminder that if the set pieces were better and the resulting jokes funnier, the movie could have aspired for the cult status of Crazy Mohan films like Sathi Leelavathi and Panchathanthiram . In its present form though, it is nowhere close.

Admittedly, the frequency of funny jokes is higher in the second half, but even that is impeded by the insertion of average songs. The loud background music through the film is unpleasant. K. S. Ravikumar (in a departure from his usual cameos), Bobby Simha, Balaji Venugopal and Karunakaran are all aptly cast, but the overall quality of humour is a let-down. That said, it isn’t difficult to imagine that the film could be successful in B and C centres. One of the production houses of the film, after all, is B & C Films.