‘Dagaalty’: A comedy without a joke

Dagaalty, ostensibly, is a comedy, but is it a comedy if you don’t laugh? It’s a film that has both Santhanam and Yogi Babu, and somehow, between them, the film can barely muster one or two effective jokes over two hours of its duration. Perhaps Dagaalty took its humour for granted because it shows more effort in continuing—very unsuccessfully—to try and transition Santhanam into hero space (haven’t we been saying this for the last six years?) than it does with its jokes.