(From top) Bachke Rehna Re Baba and Bunty Aur Babli and Sholay

Crime has its funny bone, too. And in Bollywood it’s tickled often. Fun on the run is a never dying theme for some mast popcorn cinema. The con-film culture has stoically remained unchanged over the tinsel years. Shaad Ali’s record breaking Bunty Aur Babli is a strong link in the zany chain of filmy con. The film is about chori chakari in true Bollywood ishtyle where every con antic is a riot. “The two of us get to do things we secretly wanted to do all our lives,” said Abhishek a while ago. “We’re mischievous, whacky and one-up on everybody.”

What the junior Bachchan had a ball doing in Bunty Aur Babli, his father has been doing for years now. In Ramesh Sippy’s Sholay, Amitabh and Dharmendra made the jodi of Jai and Veeru immortal with all their tricks. The better part of Shaan was also spent in regaling the audience with hilarious con tactics of Amitabh and Shashi Kapoor. An adding spice to the pot-pourri of fun was the participation of Bindiya Goswami, Parveen Babi and Chacha Johnny Walker in the action. This film is a point of reference in comic con history. The duo also rustled up a side-splitting performance as they desperately and unsuccessfully tried to kidnap a millionaire’s son in Rakesh Kumar’s Do Aur Do Paanch.

More recently, David Dhawan had the nation desperately revising their math with his Ek Aur Ek Gyarah not too long after he had them by his side with Jodi No. 1.

Con is always in the air. And it’s not just the boys who get naughty when they break the law. Bollywood belles have stolen not just hearts, but big booties too in many crime comedies. Shabana Azmi and Neetu Singh formed a great street- smart sibling duo in Manmohan Desai’s Parvarish and went about lightening every pocket with straight-faced elan.

Manisha Koirala’s production debut, Paisa Vasool, directed by Srinivas Bhashyam, trailed the adventures of two women who wanted to take a shortcut to the monies. The simpletons, in the illusion that they can actually blackmail seasoned criminals, encounter life’s not- so-small problems when they start acting fresh.

More recently, Govind Menon’s Bachke Rehna Re Baba, starring the hot Rekha and the hotter (for some) Mallika, showed off the sirens’ money making marriage schemes with Paresh Rawal caught in the whole jumpy joyride.

Besides being caught up between the bombs, Paresh himself has committed some uproariously funny crimes himself. In Priyadarshan’s Hera Pheri, along with Akshay Kumar and Suniel Shetty, he literally tortured the audience with his performance. With sides splitting, audiences have known to have fallen off their seats as the trio went about tangling themselves in an impossibly crazy web of a crime they would never be able to handle. Relentless still, he followed it up with another assault in Vikram Bhatt’s Awara Paagal Deewana.

And so continues the trend of mixing the tragic with the comic. Sometimes the seriousness of crime prevents us from enjoying the film. After all, someone’s getting ruined, even if on the curtain. The comedy in crime is therefore unavoidable. And our appetite for it, insatiable. And why not? It’s not our house that’s being robbed!