'Ya Ya': Banking on cliched humour (Tamil Movie Review)

Film: "Ya Ya"; Cast: Shiva, Santhanam, Dhansika, Sandhya, Srinivasan, Illavarasu and Devadarshini; Director: I. Rajasekaran; Rating: **

We all love to sit back and laugh our way through a film. But, what if this happens week after week for months on end? Tamil cinema has been going through this phase for nearly a year now as every alternate film that releases belongs to the comedy genre. It was fun for the first few months, then it became a little boring and presently it has become extremely irritating. "Ya Ya" is another aimless comic entertainer that makes us laugh but with humour that has been done to death.

The film revolves around two characters named Dhoni (Shiva) and Sehwag (Santhanam). Audiences are told why the leads are named after cricketers even when they have original names Ramarajan and Rajkiran respectively.

Dhoni falls head over heels for Seetha (Dhansika) en route to an interview for the post of a peon at the local councillor's office. At the interview, he mistakes the councillor for Seetha and expresses his feelings only to realise later that she is the wrong person. However, the councillor, who is years senior to him, falls for Dhoni and plans to get him at any cost.

When she can't deal with Dhoni directly, the councillor takes the help of his best friend Sehwag. She bribes Sehwag to help her get Dhoni, who sincerely loves Seetha. Sehwag tries his best to separate Dhoni and Seetha, and in the process he earns the wrath of his friend when he comes to learn about his deal with the councillor.

What happens between Dhoni, Sehwag and Seetha? This forms the rest of the story.

There is absolutely no scope for a story in the film which heavily relies on the screen presence of Shiva and Santhanam. While the duo succeed in holding the film together, they run out of jokes quite early in the film and mostly depend on cliched one-liners.

There is a cameo featuring 'Powerstar' Srinivasan. He features in a spoof of scenes from several Tamil films but turns out to be a nuisance in a film that loses steam even before the end of the first half. It is painful to sit through the rest of the film which has meaningless songs to add to our woes.

Dhansika, who impressed everybody with her performance in Tamil period-drama "Paradesi" recently, only gets to be stylish in this film. She barely has any scope to perform in her role. Shiva can make people laugh, which he has been doing for the last few years, but I believe it's high time he tries something different. People are sure to get bored of him sooner or later. Ditto for Santhanam.

"Ya Ya" is an attempt to evoke laughter with star comedians but the joke is on the audience.