Venkat Prabhu has his own brand of humor and it worked very well in both Chennai 600028 and Saroja as it livened up the proceedings which were otherwise familiar to the films' genres. But when the same kind of humor forms the basis for an entire feature film, it ends up being stretched rather thin. Goa does keep us engaged throughout and smiling most of that time but it doesn't have enough comic highpoints to be considered a successful comedy.

Vinayakam(Jai), Samikkannu(Premgi Amaran) and Ramarajan(Vaibhav) feel stifled in their village Pannapuram and can't wait to get out of there. So they head to Madurai, where they end up at the wedding of Vinayakam's friend, who is marrying a white girl. Learning that he met the girl while working as a tourist guide in Goa, the three friends also head to Goa with dreams of meeting foreign girls and marrying them. Jack(Arvind Akash) and Danny(Sampath Kumar), a gay couple, give them a place to stay and help them in their quest.

Venkat dips into his now-familiar bag of tricks to tickle our funny bone and most of them work. There are spoofs of well-worn cliches(like the village panchayat), take-offs on popular film sequences(like the Vettaikkaaran stunt sequence), visual tricks and ofcourse one-liners and gags (this might be the movie with the earliest start to jokes as even the statutory warning about cigarette smoking is delivered in a funny way). He has many different ruses and so doesn't have to overuse any of them, which is why the jokes, like Jai's pidgin English, are funny right till the end. There are a few double entendres, the most overt being the sequence where Arvind overhears a Premgi-Sampath conversation inside the room) but the humor for the most part is not vulgar(not to be confused with 'not adult'!).

But the jokes here are of the kind that evoke chuckles rather than big laughs. Most gags do find their mark and even when they are not exactly funny, they are quite smart(like the way Venkat presents conversations between two white women) or interesting(like the pop-ups telling us what the guys are saying when the surroundings are too noisy). Still the movie lacks the kind of sequences where a string of jokes, both verbal or physical, build on one another to invoke loud laughs. So the film feels like a light-hearted entertainer rather than a full-length comedy.

It is always difficult to tackle serious things in a comedy, especially one that spoofs other serious cliches, and Venkat runs into that issue in the romances. Premji's romance with Melani might be the least believable but it is the most enjoyable since it is handled with humor throughout. Jai and Piyaa's romance goes through the usual steps of realization, jealousy and denial but even when things are serious, there's always the doubt where these scenes are serious or just being played for laughs. The Vaibhav-Sneha track never makes an impact and ends tamely, after an unnecessary and ineffective detour into heist territory. Surprisingly, the most serious is the Arvind-Sampath track. While the non-cliched, non-stereotypical handling of a gay romance is admirable, the happenings are a bit too serious considering the tone of the rest of the movie.

The ensemble cast has excellent chemistry and it shows on screen. Jai finally looks like he is enjoying himself after looking confused in the last couple of films and delivers his broken english with a sincerity that is quite endearing. Premji has a rather limited set of styles and expressions but does extract a lot of mileage from that. Vaibhav stays in the sidelines for the most part. Sampath Kumar is fantastic. With an accent and body language that are unmistakable but don't go over-the-top, he creates a memorable character and shows that he could be cut out for a lot more than cliched villain roles. Arvind Akash, the latest addition to the six-pack club, is adequate. Melanie, who hails from Australia, is really pretty and looks totally at ease in the romance. Piaa looks cute while Sneha pulls off a role which is not the kind she usually plays but doesn't look very comfortable doing so.

While there are a lot of songs, many of them stop after the first stanza and so they don't irritate. The visuals too play a part in making them watchable though none of them stand out. The folksy songs Ezhuzhu Thalaimuraiyaa... and Adidaa Naiyaandi... are pretty ordinary as they are not picturized on the stars. Among the modern numbers, Valibaa Vaa Vaa... is the pick of the album, mainly because of the fun steps for the Haahaanu dhaan segment. The title song is catchy and fun but the bikini-clad women dancing for it don't look like they are having fun though. Idhu Varai... and Idai Vazhi... both feature some nice locales both indoors and outside.