If the omens are to be trusted, 2018 isn’t a happening year for Tamil cinema so far. The prolonged cinema strike that stalled almost all the activities in the filmdom, a drab National Award season and lack of a mammoth blockbuster to revitalise the theatre chains and bored viewers, marked a portentous year ahead. Then came Tamil cinema’s centenary celebrations, reports about Kaala, the Superstar entertainer and Irruttu Arrayil Murattu Kuthu (IAMK), an adult-comedy-horror mash-up, as quintessential mood shifters.

IAMK is trending for its divisive and polarising reviews surfacing on the social media. The movie is a bold entrant into the genre of adult comedies with a flavour of horror added to it. Kollywood has always had a shortage of offerings to cater Tamil moviegoers who like American Pie and Scary Movie. IAMK is an attempt to fill this demand-supply gap in the entertainment market.

Indian regional cinema has always turned a blind eye towards explicit sexual themes and its casual presence in our daily life. In most of the cases, our movies play it safe by acting like sex simply doesn’t exist at all. At the most vulnerable situations, the makers imply sexual motives or use puns. As a result, we are flooded with double entendre dialogues, lewd comments and spicy gags, smuggled within the moral blanket of mainstream, “clean” movies.

But adult comedies crack these pretensions and there is one rule - to entertain the viewers. Virtually they hold a license to utter anything under the sky like flatulence, body shaming, misogyny, homophobia, and explicit sex jokes, all culminating in fun. Our Sanskari Censor Board would really be excited to gift them an “A” certificate, which is a USP when the movie hit the screens.

It is interesting to note that Santosh Jayakumar and his team don’t commit any mistakes this time with IAMK. Their first genre outing, Hara Hara Mahadevaki, was somewhat labelled as a naive adult comedy. It’s a refreshing fact that filmmakers are exploring new genres and turning up with fresh offerings, however divisive they are. With online and streaming platforms empowering filmmakers to tell stories which otherwise cannot be told, movies like IAMK will exist alongside movies like Vikram Vedha, Aruvi, Mercury, and Iraivi.

Due to the fact that a wider range of products in an industry hints at its good health. Bollywood already has its fair share of adult comedies like Masti, Grand Masti, Oops!, Mumbai Matinee, Kyaa Kool Hai Hum, and Kya Super Kool Hain Hum. The success mantra of adult comedies isn’t just that they fire up your adolescence fantasies on screen. They are simply not some crap in which grownup men behave stupidly and get into a variety of ridiculous, embarrassing and salacious situations.

Instead, knowingly or unknowingly, they act as safety valves or means of ventilation for a society with censor habits of tagging a movie with an Adults Only certification for its lesser sanskari dialogues and situations. When we are stepping into the theatres to watch an adult comedy, we don’t have to pretend in front of our children that there is no such thing as sex exists, look away for every pun and intimidate when women show as sexual desires. Here, unfortunately, every pun is intended and they are here to entertain you.