Goa

Venkat Prabhu's 2010 Tamil film follows three young men who are always in trouble in their village. They want to get rich without working, decide that marrying a foreign woman would make it possible, and run off to Goa. The humour comes from the plan collapsing at every stage. All three imagined Goa wrongly and the reality resembles none of it; the comedy feeds on that disappointment. Venkat Prabhu is a director who works in friend-group narratives, and here too the cast is large and the pace fast. Against that, the film carries the stereotypes of mainstream Tamil cinema of the period about foreigners and sexual identity, and makes them comic material. Who it's for: those who like Tamil friendship comedy. Who it's not for: viewers troubled by humour built on stereotypes; the film uses them often.