Get ready for a summer of laughs. Beginning with Ekta Kapoor's ha-ha-thon "Kya Kool Hain Hum", which opened to an approving crowd of leery thrill seekers last week, Hindi cinema seems to be poised on the precipice of pungent parody.

While the risqué rhythms of "Kya Kool Hain Hum" might not cut much ice with more sophisticated elements in the audience, next week's biggie "Jo Bole So Nihal" is a farce-fest that should appeal across the board. This isn't the first time that director Rahul Rawail is doing a comedy. However, his efforts to generate laughter with Sunny Deol's papa in "Mast Kalandar" weren't all that successful.

Right after Rawail's film there's "Bachke Rehna Re Baba" where Rekha and Mallika Sherawat play mom and daughter whooping it up. This one is clearly a ladies-day-ouch kind of melee-melange that could find an audience provided it wants to see a mother and daughter have a ball instead of the bawl, as they usually do. And with the two funsters Paresh Rawal and Satish Shah on the prowl there's much more to giggle about in this fun fest.

If "Jo Bole..." clicks, the comedy in Hindi films will benefit immensely. Around the corner are more big comic outings, like Shaad Ali's "Bunty Aur Babli" where Abhishek Bachchan and Rani Mukherjee star as two con-persons on the run, outdoing a canny cop (Amitabh Bachchan) every step of the way.

Needless to say none of these films has any element of tears or high drama. "It's full-on time pass at the theatres," says Riteish Deshmukh, who's been a part of two recent comedies, "Masti" and "Kya Kool Hain Hum".

And he has a point. Laughter seems to be the prevalent mood of cinema all over the country. In Tamil Nadu, Kamal Haasan's "Mumbai Xpress" is chugging along full-throttle. In Karnataka, the laughter is getting even louder.

Kannada heartthrob Dhyaan who recently did "Jootata", which was the Kannada version of Priyadarshan's Hindi laugh riot "Hungama", is already doing another comedy called "Jackpot" in which he plays a Casanova reborn as a woman.

"I guess cinema in every part of the world is looking for laughter, because that's what the audience wants," says Dhyaan who has also been offered a chance to do a major comedy in Hindi.

"It's based on Shakespeare's 'Comedy of Errors'. I think the era of good, clean, wholesome family comedies is coming back. The cheap under-the-belt variety of humour is certainly not desirable any longer."