Johny Johny Yes Appa Review: it offers nothing new

The new G Marthandan movie Johny Johny Yes Appa is written by Joji Thomas who wrote the hit movie Vellimoonga. Vellimoonga was a great success as it remained as a comedy entertainer in entirety. But when it comes to Johny Johny Yes Appa, the script is trying to be a package. And the comedy becomes a lifeline for the movie to be less boring. The lengthy and disjoint second half makes Johny Johny Yes Appa a tedious experience where you might forget the jokes.

Johny is the second son of his father and his father thinks that he is the most obedient one among his 3 kids. Johny works in the church, but has another secret avatar which nobody knows and that is diametrically opposite to the perceived image of his. How an event exposes him and how he survives that phase is what Johny Johny Yes Appa is talking about.

There is a striking shift in nature of the first half and second half of the movie. First half of the movie is in a way another version of Vellimoonga. Because the hero is crooked and the characters around him also are familiar. And to be honest that first half of the movie is enjoyable. In the second half, Johny is acting like an entirely different character with no shades of his crookedness. And the movie goes for a new conflict that looks so outdated. And it almost forgets about all the things it constructed in the first half. A major possible subplot featuring Johny's love life got sidelined as a mere comedy side track.

The outdated style of G Marthandan's making was never making the movie a compelling one and whatever excites you were all in the writing. But like I said, post interval even the writer Joji Thomas is clueless about how to move forward. New characters are introduced and the movie shifts to a style that would have worked 10 or 15 years back. There is a scene Johny becomes emotional in front of his brothers and I was as perplexed as Sharafudheen in that scene. The script hangs on to one emotional back story painstakingly long and it was a big flaw in the screenplay. Joji Thomas sort of forgot why Vellimoonga became a hit. Music was okay while the background score sounded funny.

The character played by Kunchako Boban is one more to the list of similar characters he has played. The way he becomes sensitive in the second half was really awkward. And for some reason he was always covering his face whenever he cried on screen. Anu Sithara was looking beautiful and played the part very smartly as that disobedient girl. I really wished the movie was more about her character and Johny. Sharafudheen and Tini Tom are the brothers and they both were good especially Sharafudheen with his murmuring jokes. Vijayaraghavan was fine and Geetha was forgettable. Sanoop fails to carry the emotional heft. Kalabhavan Shajon was wasted in one role. Lena and Mamta Mohandas are also there in this movie.

Johny Johny Yes Appa could have been that simple passable entertainer if it had remained rooted to it's characters and landscape. With an extremely outdated conflict ruining it completely for the movie, this Marthandan movie offers nothing new.