Gautaman Bhaskaran’s Review: Goa

Two-film old Venkat Prabhu calls his latest Goa (in Tamil) a holiday adventure set in the western State, whose traditional culture of feni, fun and a dash of Portugal have now given way to sheer notoriety.

Review: Goa

Cast: Jai, Vaibhav Reddy, Premji Amaran, Sneha, Piaa Bajpai, Melanie Marie, Aravind Akash, Sampath Raj

Direction: Venkat Prabhu

Rating: *

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Two-film old Venkat Prabhu calls his latest Goa (in Tamil) a holiday adventure set in the western State, whose traditional culture of feni, fun and a dash of Portugal have now given way to sheer notoriety. Just days before the movie’s opening on January 29 came the news of a nine-year-old Russian girl being molested on the beaches of Goa, one of a string of brutal incidents that included murder and rape of foreign women.

So when the three friends in the film – Vinayagam (Jai), Ramarajan (Vaibhav Reddy) and Saamikannau (Premji Amaran) – flee their soul smothering, conservative hamlet in Tamil Nadu with a song in their hearts and stars in their eyes, and head for Goa, one begins to feel queasy. Out to gawk at bikini-clad babes on the beaches and hook a girl with a passport to the West, the trio get entangled with gay men (one of them played superbly by Sampath Raj, a complete change of garb from the villain he usually portrayed), a ruthless casino owner (Sneha’s Suhasini Fernando),a demure foreigner (Melanie Marie as Jessica Alba all eager to don the sari and the sindhur) and an Indian in hot pants looking-for-true-love, Roshni (Piaa Bajpai). Pepper these with raucousness, costumes that batter your visual senses and a raunchy rollercoaster run, and you get a salad that cannot be swallowed.

Sadly, despite all the hype that Goa raised, it cannot even pass as one of those flicks that allow you to lean back and enjoy.