By Variyata Vyas
In mainstream Bollywood comedy films such as Hera Pheri (2000), Partner (2007), Welcome (2007), and Munna Bhai M.B.B.S. (2003), and many more such movies women are largely relegated to peripheral roles, often serving as romantic interests, objects of desire, or moral compasses for the male protagonists. These characters are frequently written through a male gaze, reflecting patriarchal ideals of femininity: obedient, beautiful, nurturing, or in need of male rescue or validation. They rarely contribute to the narrative through comedic agency. The humor in these films is driven almost exclusively by the male characters, who dominate screen time and dialogue. Comedy becomes a masculine performance, an arena where men display wit, physical humor, and verbal play. Women, in contrast, are often the passive recipients or spectators of jokes, or worse, the butt of them. Their presence in comedic sequences is usually functional, serving to highlight the absurdity, charm, or incompetence of the male leads. When women do participate in humorous scenes, they do so in a constrained manner, often reinforcing gender stereotypes rather than challenging them. This gendered distribution of comic agency reinforces traditional power hierarchies, where men are the creators of action and women are either accessories or obstacles within the comedic narrative.
This paper explores the representation of women-centric comedy in Indian cinema, focusing on six films: Seeta Aur Geeta (1972), Chaalbaaz (1989), Khoobsurat (1980 & 2014), Darlings (2022), Veere Di Wedding (2018), and Thank You for Coming (2023).
The feminist media scholar, Kathleen Rowe Karlyn, in her key work The Unruly Woman: Gender and the Genres of Laughter, talks about the figure of the “unruly woman” – a comedic, excessive, and transgressive character who unsettles traditional gender roles through laughter. Her work links feminist theory to popular culture, positioning comedy as a potential space of resistance for women in media. The unruly woman disrupts patriarchal cinema’s visual and narrative economy, asserting agency through audacity, wit, and bodily presence.
Within this framework, Seeta Aur Geeta (1972), directed by Ramesh Sippy and starring Hema Malini in a double role, emerges as a significant intervention in mainstream Hindi cinema. At a time when narratives were propelled mainly by male protagonists, Seeta Aur Geeta distinguishes itself by centering two complex female characters, each representing contrasting responses to patriarchal control. The film’s comedic appeal arises not from conventional slapstick or male-led antics, but from the contrast between the submissive Seeta and the defiant Geeta. This contrast becomes both a source of humour and a mechanism for social critique. Hema Malini’s dual portrayal reinforces the tension between obedience and rebellion. Seeta, silenced and exploited by her upper-class guardians, embodies the trope of the suffering woman trapped within familial oppression. Geeta, by contrast, raised in a working-class environment by a street performer, exhibits autonomy, resilience, and a sharp tongue. She participates in public life, earns a living, and confronts adversaries without deference, a deviation from the conventional feminine ideal. Her language, physical assertiveness, and irreverence position her within Rowe Karlyn’s schema of unruliness.
The film’s narrative trajectory, in which the sisters unknowingly switch places, serves as a comedic yet critical reconfiguration of social hierarchies. Geeta’s refusal to submit to Seeta’s oppressors, including the lecherous cousin Ranjit, shifts the axis of power. Her verbal aggression and physical defiance upend the gendered expectations of cinematic comedy, where such dominance is typically reserved for men. The audience’s laughter thus operates as both enjoyment and endorsement of Geeta’s subversive energy.
Seeta, though quieter, also contributes to the film’s comic and emotional landscape. Her awkward interactions with the wild, masculine Raka generate situational humour, while her vulnerability highlights the everyday violence endured by women within domestic spaces. Notably, male characters such as Dharmendra’s Raka and Sanjeev Kumar’s Dr. Ravi are not positioned as saviours but as supporters. The resolution is led by the female protagonists, thereby reversing the typical gender dynamic in Hindi cinema. The film reframes the comedic genre as one capable of accommodating female agency, using humour not merely for entertainment but as a tool for critique and catharsis.
Chaalbaaz (1989), directed by Pankaj Parashar, builds on this foundation, reimagining the twin-swap formula with Sridevi in the central dual role. Like Seeta Aur Geeta, it explores the divergent paths of twins raised in contrasting social environments. Anju, the timid twin, is emotionally stifled under the care of a cruel uncle and aunt, while Manju, raised in a lower-class neighbourhood, is bold, assertive, and quick-witted. The narrative unfolds through a classic mistaken-identity switch, leading to comic disruptions and eventual justice. Sridevi’s performance anchors the film, as she seamlessly alternates between the fragility of Anju and the vivacity of Manju. Her comic timing, particularly in scenes where Manju confronts Anju’s abusers, is infused with a sense of justice rather than mere farce. The supporting cast, including Rajinikanth and Sunny Deol, enhances the film’s commercial appeal, yet remains orbiting around Sridevi’s commanding presence. Although Chaalbaaz draws heavily from Seeta Aur Geeta, it reinterprets the story for the late 1980s with a heightened sense of style and spectacle.
Cinema, at its best, captures the spirit of its times while retaining a human core that transcends generations. Khoobsurat is one such story told twice, in very different eras with the same foundational belief: that women, through wit, compassion, and irreverence, can shake up the most rigid households. The 1980 (Rekha-starrer) and 2014 (Sonam Kapoor-starrer) versions stand as rare but shining examples of women-led comedies, where female protagonists are not merely romantic interests but catalysts for change. One is set in a middle-class Indian home, the other in a royal Rajasthani palace, but both chart the journey of women who challenge control with warmth, humour, and emotional intelligence.
The original Khoobsurat (1980), directed by Hrishikesh Mukherjee, is a comedy of manners rooted in Indian middle-class values. Manju, played by Rekha in one of her most iconic roles, enters a tightly disciplined household run by matriarch Nirmala Gupta (Dina Pathak), who believes in rules as a form of love. Manju’s arrival disrupts the order—she’s witty, mischievous, and full of theatrical charm. What begins as playful defiance turns into a confrontation about joy, autonomy, and the right to laugh freely. Manju doesn’t dismantle authority through confrontation but through humour and clever subversion. In one memorable scene, she stages a family play that gently mocks Nirmala’s dictatorship, unaware that Nirmala is watching. The scene evokes both laughter and pathos (comedy that reveals pain, not cruelty). Nirmala isn’t villainized; she is revealed as lonely and afraid of losing control.
In 2014, Khoobsurat was reimagined in a glossier, more overtly romantic style. Directed by Shashanka Ghosh and co-produced by Disney, the film stars Sonam Kapoor as Mili, an eccentric physiotherapist hired to treat a paralysed king. Much like Manju, Mili enters a home bound by grief and decorum. The queen (Ratna Pathak Shah), a modern echo of the 1980 matriarch (seen in the earlier version of Khoobsurat), governs the palace with emotional austerity. Mili’s colourful clothes and chaotic energy clash with the palace’s polished silence, but she gradually brings life back into its grieving corridors.
Unlike Manju, whose power lies in emotional wit, Mili is professionally accomplished and financially independent. Her profession isn’t a backdrop, it drives the narrative. Through her work, Mili helps the king heal, and in doing so, becomes the emotional fulcrum of the family’s recovery. The 2014 film adds layers of grief and emotional shutdown, and frames Mili not just as comic relief but as a bridge between trauma and healing.
What makes both Khoobsurat versions distinctly women-led comedies is that the humour arises from women who disrupt norms not with cruelty, but with care. They are outsiders who don’t conform but also don’t conquer. Their difference is their strength. Their femininity is never mocked; it is celebrated through boldness, vulnerability, and refusal to play small. The treatment of older female characters in both films also stands out. Nirmala, whether in a middle-class home or a palace, is complex, strong, intelligent, but emotionally guarded. Her eventual softening is not a defeat, but a revelation.
Women-led comedies remain a rare and tentative subgenre in Indian mainstream cinema. But when they arrive, they often carry more weight than their glossy surfaces might suggest. Films like Thank You for Coming (2023), Darlings (2022), and Veere Di Wedding (2018) represent how the modern generation of women in Indian society navigate issues such as domestic violence, the pressure to marry, generational trauma, the fight for sexual autonomy, and the contradictions of female friendship under patriarchy. What connects these films is not merely that they are about women or led by women, but that they use humour not to trivialize women’s problems but to prise open space for their rage, vulnerability, and desire. The very act of placing women at the centre of comedic narratives is political. Comedy, especially in patriarchal cultures, has traditionally been male terrain, men being funny, men talking about women, men driving the joke. As the feminist film theorist, Laura Mulvey famously argued in her seminal essay Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema, mainstream cinema often positions women as the passive object of the “male gaze,” existing only to be looked at, desired, or rescued. In contrast, these recent films reposition women as active agents, often looking back, speaking back, and laughing back. The comedic lens shifts the gaze, allowing female characters to become subjects rather than spectacles, and this reframing destabilizes entrenched gender norms in cinema.
Unlike typical romantic comedies centered on finding the perfect life partner, these films offer sharp, satirical takes on the experience of being a woman navigating the constant pressures to be respectable, desirable, beautiful, good in bed, and above all, never alone—all within the framework of comedy.
In Thank You for Coming, Bhumi Pednekar plays Kanika Kapoor, a 32-year-old single woman on a desperate search not for a husband, but for sexual pleasure. It’s an audacious premise for Indian cinema, one that mocks and magnifies the absurdity of women’s sexual repression. The comedy is upfront, even slapstick at times, but it is based on a real cultural problem: the invisibilization of female pleasure. Kanika’s inability to reach climax is not just a running gag but a metaphor for how patriarchal scripts of romance fail women. Her eventual discovery of pleasure through masturbation, not intercourse, becomes the film’s core argument: self-worth and sexual agency cannot be outsourced to men or societal structures. On the other hand, the Alia Bhatt starrer movie Darlings, a dark comedy talking about domestic violence, walks a tightrope between dark humour and bleak realism, focusing on Badru (Alia Bhatt), a woman trying to make her abusive husband change. The comedy here isn’t light, it’s bitter, ironic, and based on the small absurdities of survival. The neighbourly gossip, the police’s casual sexism, the mother’s quiet interventions, all present a social fabric that treats women’s suffering as mundane. When Badru finally turns the table on her husband, the film doesn’t just offer revenge, but reclamation. Badru’s transformation isn’t about embodying an ideal woman; it’s about subverting the script altogether.
Veere Di Wedding takes a more glamorous route, its protagonists shielded by wealth and class, but the emotional architecture is no less real. Kalindi, Avni, Sakshi, and Meera are four friends navigating messy lives: commitment issues, divorce, cultural alienation, and sexual shame. The film doesn’t try to moralize their choices, nor does it redeem them by making them perfect. What it does is allow them to be flawed in ways usually reserved for male characters: angry, selfish, confused, and sexual. Sakshi’s story, in particular, touches a nerve. When her husband catches her using a vibrator, he files for divorce. She does not feel shame for masturbating, but for being judged for it. This mirrors Kanika’s arc, where a woman’s pleasure is seen as a threat to the institution of marriage.
Across all three films, comedy is a cover for confrontation. Whether it’s Kanika’s pursuit of sexual pleasure, Badru’s rebellion against abuse, or Kalindi’s phobia of marriage, these women are resisting the roles they are expected to play. The laughs aren’t accidental, but they are strategic. They defang the discomfort around female sexuality, allowing viewers to confront it without defensiveness. They also create space for women to talk to each other, and not just about men. Female friendships in these films are not saccharine; they are marked by jealousy, betrayal, rage, and repair. Pallavi slaps Kanika in Thank You for Coming, believing she slept with her husband. Kalindi lashes out at her friends in Veere Di Wedding for trying to “fix” her. These fights are not subplots, but they are integral, showing that women’s relationships with each other can be sites of both harm and healing. It’s also telling that none of these films end in typical resolutions. Darlings ends with Badru walking away, not toward someone. Thank You for Coming ends with Kanika happily single, rejecting the idea that marriage validates pleasure. Veere Di Wedding ends with Kalindi choosing to marry on her terms, with minimal rituals and maximal freedom. These are not stories about women being saved, but about women saving themselves.
Of course, these films have limitations. The gloss of Veere Di Wedding skirts over caste and class complexities. Thank You for Coming leans into caricature at times, risking trivialization. Darlings, while powerful, has been critiqued for its use of humour in a story of abuse. Yet despite these flaws, all three films mark an important cultural shift. They do not treat women as symbols or martyrs. They treat them as people—funny, messy, horny, hurt, and healing. Whatthese women-centric comedies offer is not just laughter, but legitimacy. They let women see themselves not as the background to someone else’s story, but as the centre of chaos, conflict, comedy and laughter. In doing so, they reclaim something long denied: the right to be taken seriously, even when laughing.
We need more women-centric comedies because they offer a much-needed counterpoint to the dominant narratives in cinema that revolve around male experiences, perspectives, and humour. Comedy has long been a space where men explore their desires, fears, and flaws with freedom, while women are relegated to the sidelines as love interests, nags, or moral compasses. Women-centric comedies flip this dynamic. They allow women to be funny, angry, sexual, vulnerable, and messy without having to be “likable” in a traditional sense. These films normalize the complexity of women’s lives and challenge the notion that stories about women have to be either tragic or moralistic to be valid. They portray friendships, conflicts, and solidarities that mirror real-life female relationships, which are rarely represented with nuance in mainstream media. The demand for more of these comedies is not about tokenism; it’s about recognising that women are not a niche audience, they are half the world, and their lives deserve to be seen in full colour.
References:
Rowe, K. (1995) The Unruly Woman: Gender and the Genres of Laughter. Austin: University of Texas Press.
Mulvey, L. (2016) Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema. London: Afterall Books.
