Hindu customs and beliefs. Practices and percepts. Institutions and professions. Habits and habiliments. Faith and philosophies. These, and many more, have become easy meat for moviemakers to marinate them to concoct films for crass, comedic “entertainment.”

Without qualms, and with utmost impunity, these self acclaimed purveyors of “entertainment” gratuitously resort to derisive, denigrative and disreputable ways to depict the Hindus, more specifically Brahmins, their kin, clan, lifestyles and living, practices and percepts, faith and beliefs, in their wanton works.

This, more so, to woo gullible audiences “starved” of ensemble entertainment. More specifically, today’s adrift and spendthrift, footloose, fancy free millennials as fodder for their flippant entertainment.

These filmmakers are emboldened that the community per se does not easily take umbrage to the depictions on screen nor resort to more demonstrative ways to express their displeasure at the caricature or comical representations.

No wonder then, every once a while, you have filmmakers come up with films, much to the chagrin of the community who stoically leave it to the wise counsel of audiences, then express dissent violently, to ignore and leave it at that.

Unlike other communities who make filmmakers think twice before ruffling their sacred feathers or play with their ideologies they hold sacrosanct, lest they face fusillade of violent remonstrations – both demonstrative and destructively.

Many films of the nature have been flooding Indian movie marquee in the belief they are the change agents reflective of the times one is living in and how modern generations are thumbing their noses at their elders generations. I shall, however, stick to a couple, that hit the screens, in recent times, in Sandalwood.

The most recent example being debutant Sindhu Sreenivasa Murthy with Aachar & Co who gleefully took to lampoon, and more so, ridicule traditional practices and the concept of joint family run by a well meaning, stern, censorial patriarch ruling his brood of ten disciplined children and his dutiful wife with an iron fist.

Every frame of the facetious film was scripted to tease out as much mindless mirth in the goings-on between the panoply of characters of the large family,their quirks, quibbles and idiosyncrasies, notwithstanding, turning their experiences into discomfiting and disquiet affair to indulgently wallow in. Thereby spewing scorn at the ways of the past, traditional and well meaning practices predominant to Indian societies.

By resorting to stock comedic interludes, the young director turned Aachar & Co into a reprehensively mindless malarkey to suffer through despite its otherwise progressive intent and narrative of a woman’s independence, freedom and empowerment.

That Sidhu was part of 2016 Qaushiq Mukherjee’s sex romp comedy, again prejudicially titled Brahman Naman about a Brahmin boy Naman,where she plays Ash, who is besotted by him, but contemptuously spurned, is another matter. She is since seen in Family Dramaas Divya trying to work her way to a job with her smattering of broken English.

As if emboldened and enthused by her peer and counterpart Sindhu’s success, joining ranks with her is Sanjotha Bhandary with her offensively and derisively titled Langoti Man.

Presenting conflict between traditional values and modern aspirations driven by consumerist culture and critiquing millennials’ overzealous fad for pricey branded wears, Sanjotha, avariciously milks as much mirth from the miserable situation the protagonist finds himself.

Sanjotha returns to test the pulse of her audiences, after a decade’s hiatus having earlier debuted with the risqué comedy Mirchi Mandaki Kadak Chai equally mischievously titled now with her sophomore feature Langoti Man.

In seeking to source her “entertainment” sustenance to regale her audiences from the comedic dramedy that is depicted, she pits the simple, hygienic, and traditional “kaupina or langoti or putkosi” against the modern,fashion driven “jockstrap/briefs/thongs,” valiantly making out a comparative case of their merits and demerits.

Like Sindhu, Sanjotha leaves no stone unturned to pack the film with bawdy comedic interludes, which
bristles with “below-the-belt” breezy banter to ensure her audiences are invested in Langoti Man.

Lest, the humour runs out of steam midway, which it does anyway, with repetitive angry jabs between the grandfather and grandson and the beau’s leg pulling friends, she gives it a thriller twist with rape, kidnap and murder, in which Theertha Kumar gets entangled, resulting in the film’s tedious 165 run time.

Woefully, in sewing all possible genres into her convoluted and confounding film all that Sanjotha manages to do is turn her “enervating” enterprise rather tedious, rambunctious time at theatres.

By intermission you have had enough of insufferable and asinine goings on be the pow-wow with the didactic grandpa trying to drum sense into his wayward grandson about the merits of “two-bit white cotton chaddi/kacha”.

Like its protagonist, nothing really goes right for the frivolous and flippant fare whose only objective is to assault audiences with copious concoction of contrived cacophonous mindless mirth.

So much so, films like the above, bring as much disrepute to the fraternity as also to the industry. The audiences paying the painful price of diligently and expectantly trooping hoping for meaningful entertainment. They are left nonplussed at the obnoxious goings on all in the garb of providing a conflict between tradition and modernity and its resolution through unmitigated putrid proceedings.

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S VISWANATH is a veteran film critic who officiates as JURY at several National & International Film Festivals. He deputises as CHIEF CINEMA CURATOR/PROGRAMMER & CREATIVE ADVISOR for Bengaluru International Film Festival (BIFFes). He also curates & advises on the selection of shorts & documentaries for Bengaluru International Short Film Festival (BISFF). Mr Viswanath is the author of “RANDOM REFLECTIONS: A Kaleidoscopic Musings on Kannada Cinema”.