Ahmed Khan is reeling in the love and success that Welcome To The Jungle has brought in recently, especially in a time when comedies are finding it hard to find takers. Ask him what worked in this film compared to others and he says, “Making people laugh is one of the hardest things as everyone has a different taste in comedy. We just kept one thing in mind that we will not delve into vulgarity, we won’t make demeaning jokes or do slapstick comedy. We went for the age group of 5 to 95, and it worked for us.”
With Welcome To The Jungle, Ahmed Khan brought together actors Akshay Kumar and Raveena Tandon on screen after decades. But how did he manage to convince the two for this reunion? “Akshay Kumar was always associated with the film, and I had this one character of a strong village woman and I had Raveena Tandon in mind for it. So, I told Raveena that you and Akshay haven’t done a film together in years and both of them are very close friends of mine. They thought ki ab sab itna aage badh chuke hain ki kabhi na kabhi to kuch karna hi tha saath mein. So for the public’s sake and for them to enjoy it, they did it. Whatever they did though, was in the film’s context, it’s the audience who found their own take on it,” he says.
But apart from these two, the filmmakers had to justify having over 30 actors on screen. How did he make sure that none of them felt superficial or there just for the sake of it? His answer is, “bifurcation”. “I bifurcated them in mandlis of actors, crews, villagers and villains. Putting them together became easy after that. Also, I didn’t give individual scenes to anyone. Every scene had almost all of them reacting to the same situation, so no one was left out,” he says.
In a chat with us, Akshay had credited director Anees Bazmee for making the Welcome franchise what it is. Taking the mantle would have come with a sense of responsibility for Ahmed too, but he chose to give the film his own touch. “Anees bhai’s flavour of humour is very different. He is a writer, I am not. His humour starts from his pen, mine comes on the camera straightaway. Welcome was always known for that niche Dubai, black suits, and glamour. I completely changed the palette and went neutral. I kept everybody in one uniform, so there was no hierarchy. I gave it a sepia tone, which is quite different from comedy films’ setting which is usually loud and colourful. I made a very serious looking comedy film. The action director in me also creeped up a little in that,” he laughs.