Satya(Arunkumar) is an aspiring painter studying in Arts College, who becomes good friends with a model Nimmi(Rambha). His need for some immediate money becomes greater when his mother(Fathima Babu) needs an operation to cure her brain tumor. A discarded painting of his is sent to Junior Vikatan by a woman who identifies herself as Thilothi. Its publication helps him meet an old man Williams, who agrees to pay for his mother's operation if he painted a portrait of his dead wife. Satya falls in love with the unseen Thilothi and becomes obsessed with finding her.

The movie has a strong resemblance to Kaalamellaam Kaadhal Vaazhga, where Murali falls in love with and becomes obsessed with finding Kousalya, whose voice he has heard but whom he has never seen. Here too, Arunkumar becomes obsessed with finding a woman he has never seen and that becomes his all-consuming passion, at the expense of his friends and family. The crucial difference here is that the audience too doesn't know who the mysterious Thilothi is. The director maintains this suspense well for quite a while with Arunkumar's close misses(like the scene where she drops her book from the bus) raising our curiosity.

The movie adopts a different track to keep us engrossed. The climax, while not completely practical or even logical, is unexpected and very different. Thilothi's speech makes some good points about the way romance is typically portrayed in movies. The way the director brings in a casual dialog from before, which at that time seemed like a failed(and even distasteful) piece of comedy dialog, is excellent. But inspite of these, the climax doesn't have the impact of the climax in Sethu and the blame lies on the way the screenplay led to that point.

This is the kind of movie where the director saw a one-line story he liked but which would unfortunately provide him with enough material for a half-hour sitcom only and so proceeded to fill up the remaining time with unnecessary characters and situations. So, the path to the climax is littered with loose ends, glaring illogicalities and loads and loads of superfluous material. For instance, Arunkumar and co. seem to pick the most roundabout ways of finding the identity of Thilothi and naturally meet with little success.

The whole story about Arun's sick mother and the old man who asks him to paint his dead wife's portrait(the photograph of his wife is one of Catherine Zeta Jones, with a bindi!) is unnecessary and has no bearing on the story. Meena's segment(she has a cameo but surprisingly gets first billing over Rambha, who has a lot more screen time!), though smaller, is also nothing more than a filler. Anandraj, as Arunkumar's estranged father never really fits in and the reason for their estrangement is never given either.

Arunkumar gets a chance to do something more than dance and fight and makes use of the oppurtunity. He performs well in the climax. But I still feel he lacks that special something that distinguishes a hero from an actor. Rambha, demoted from heroine to friend, is never seen for long periods of time but makes her fans happy by appearing in mini skirts the rest of the time. The new face playing Arunkumar's sister makes a mark, especially during her dialog with the postman. Debutante music director Jai's songs sound mostly noisy but the sequences have been picturised imaginatively.