The latest addition to the adult comedy genre in Tamil cinema is Perusu (Big) and unfortunately, it is also the latest unfunny flick to join this genre in Kollywood. Produced by director Karthik Subbaraj’s Stone Bench Films, Baweja Studios and Ember Light Studio, the movie is a remake of director Ilango Ram’s Sinhalese film Tentigo and is helmed by him. Perusu revolves around an elderly man’s sudden demise, his erect penis and how the shocked family struggles to give him a befitting funeral. (Also read: Vikram is the pride of Tamil cinema, says SJ Suryah; calls Veera Dheera Sooran ‘a Hollywood-like film made in Tamil’)
At the outset, this movie’s storyline seems like a barrel of laughs, but Perusu is just a raunchy film with average performances, recurrent anatomical jokes and silly slapstick dialogues. Another film, Sweetheart, produced by music director Yuvan Shankar Raja, is also interlaced with adult comedy. According to Sacnilk, while Perusu has collected around ₹2.2 crore at the box office in a week, Sweetheart has managed to just make around ₹1.75 crore. With such poor collections, the question is whether this under-explored genre is even working in Tamil cinema now.
The legacy of adult comedies
One of the most memorable adult comedies in Tamil cinema is Manmadha Leelai, which was released in 1976. When Tamil film legend, director K Balachander, made Manmadha Leelai with Kamal Haasan, Aalam, Hema Chaudhary and Jaya Prada, the film was considered bold. However, it went on to become a cult classic in the years to come. Kamal Haasan essays Madhu, a married but desperate wannabe womanizer who fails to end up having any affair, though he relentlessly pursues both married and single women. The film was far ahead of its time and became controversial, but like Kamal Haasan stated, it was ‘a breaking down of the fidelity stereotypes’, which has become the subject of numerous adult comedies.
Director Balu Mahendra also made films like Rettai Vaal Kuruvi (1987) and Sathi Leelavati (1995), which fall into this genre. But it was director, writer and actor K Bhagyaraj who who made these films mainstream delivering numerous hits. The Andha Ezhu Naatkal (1981) director explores adult themes in some of his movies, especially those related to marriage, relationships, infidelity, and sexuality, and infuses them with humour and a moral lesson.
If his Darling Darling Darling (1982) was about lust versus love, then Chinna Veedu (1985) was about extra-marital affairs. Even Mundhanai Mudichu (1983) explored intimacy and desire and was laced with dialogues with double meanings and adult humour, just like Bhgayaraj’s other films. But post the era of these popular directors, the adult comedy genre went underground till it saw a resurgence in a new avatar in recent years.
The new age adult comedies
Suddenly, there seemed to be a rediscovery of this genre around 2015 when several films centred around this theme were released. Director Adhik Ravichandran debuted with Trisha Illana Nayanthara with GV Prakash Kumar. The film released to average reviews, some calling it out for doing a half-baked job. Subsequently, Hara Hara Mahadevaki (2017) and Iruttu Araiyil Murattu Kuththu (2018), starring Gautam Karthik, were released, and both were hits at the box office. In 2022, GOAT director Venkat Prabhu did Manmadha Leelai, and at the time, he stated, “I think we aren’t doing proper adult-comedy films now. It remains an unexplored genre. I sometimes look back to director Bhagyaraj films, and those were a big inspiration to me.” Unfortunately, Manmadha Leelai’s attempt at being funny fell flat, and many felt it was another movie about adultery that was cringe. And in 2025, it is Perusu that failed to strike gold at the box office.
These new-age adult comedies now seem to have only one aim – to titillate the youth audience with sleaze and thereby rake in the moolah. One of the fundamental issues with the adult comedy films being made today is the strong objectification of women and the use of overt sex and sexuality to lure youngsters into theatres. The excessive use of double-entendre dialogues and suggestive innuendos to drive the story forward also no longer cuts it with the audience. Many of these films are being rejected for being crass and lacking substance, unlike those made by earlier directors like Balachander or Bhagyaraj.
Audience fatigue from sitting through two-and-a-half hours of cheap double-meaning jokes and forced adult themes has clearly caught up as the demand for well-crafted, meaningful content is on the rise. Reviews of these films in recent times have noted that the writing is particularly weak, and sensationalism alone is not enough to deliver a hit. Furthermore, most adult comedy entertainers don’t have bankable A-list actors who would automatically draw in the audience as well.
In a world where films are available at one’s fingertips thanks to OTT and smartphones, the Tamil audience – majority of whom are families – want to watch films in theatres that are worth their time and money. Writers and filmmakers must strike the right balance between bold storytelling, humour, relatability, and strong execution, if the adult comedy genre is to sustain and work at the box office.
