Narmada(Pranathi) is the leading heroine in the state and Bala(Jai Akash) is her driver. Though Narmada hates the sight of him and spews venom whenever she sees him, Bala resolutely stays put by her side. Things get to a head and Narmada orders him to get out of her house. Thats when her dad(Rajesh) explains why she has been unfair to Bala all along.

Considering that he's part of Kollywood, one would expect that the director has atleast a basic idea about the behavior of its heroines. But it doesn't look like he does. Consider this sequence for instance. Pranathi comes to meet her fans who want to gift her a fan(!). They switch it on(they don't plug it in or anything, mind you), drop it and take some photos as her skirt is flying up. She goes back inside unconcerned as they walk out talking loudly about photographing the actress in her underwear. And when an offended Jai Akash fights with them, she shouts at him! Not to forget her instructions to her maid to talk like her when her fans call and respond with an "I love you" when they profess love for her! And its not just her. We also get characters like the financier who plots to kill the heroine to make the film run! It like the director is from a bizarro world where behavior like this is normal.

Jai Akash has a stutter but acts although he is dumb(in both senses of the word). The flashback tells us why he doesn't tell Pranathi about his past but there seems to be no reason why he doesn't just come out and explain the situation in cases when he is misunderstood. His silent behavior in most cases makes us feel like he deserves what he gets.

I was stumped at many places trying to understand the director's thought process. Jai Akash in one scene sees an isolated news item about a North Indian actress being poisoned. Normal behavior would be to ignore the news item since it is about some actress somewhere. Even considering that no one in this film behaves normally, we would expect Jai Akash to tell Pranathi about his suspicions or throw out her food out. But he, without a word to anyone, spreads her lunch out on a table and begins eating it slowly! Ofcourse, this allows Pranathi to walk in and shout at him for his act!

If Tamil cinema has always been on shaky ground when it comes to the field of medicine(I still smile when I think of the "blood vomiting" in Unakkaaga Mattum ), Kaatrullavarai is smack in the middle of an earthquake! One character gets hit on the back of his head and develops a stutter(when the doctor is asked why he is stuttering, the doctor helpfully states "inimel avar ippadi thaan pesuvaaru"). Another gets hit on the head and becomes mad, which then miraculously turns into something called 'selective amnesia'. But what the doctor describes - the character not remembering anything for the past 2 years (how he knows that its only 2 years, I have no idea), seems suspiciously like short-term memory loss. I think there are enough grounds for doctors to sue the director here!

We've always had actors associated with certain roles. Mohan was always a singer while Murali was the automatic choice to play the hero who never expressed his love to the heroine. In the same way, it looks like when producers think of 'wimp', they automatically think of Jai Akash. The fights notwithstanding, he plays another such role here after Amudhe . Pranathi neither looks nor acts like a leading heroine. Producer Suresh further compounds our miseries by appearing on screen instead of sticking to financing it.