Mahalakshmi(Sona), Poonkodi(Urvasi Patel) and Amudha(Sindhuri) are village girls who yearn to experience life in the city. They get the opportunity when one of their friends, getting married in Chennai, invites them and they attend the marriage alongwith a big group from the village. Realising that sightseeing is not part of the group's agenda, they split from the group to explore the city on their own. Ready to return home after getting their fill of the city, they find their money has been stolen and they are now at the mercy of the city. Their worried parents report the issue to a policewoman Arthi(Mumtaj), who strives to locate them.

While movies confused about the tone to adopt are quite easy to find in Tamil cinema, it is difficult to remember another movie that straddled such radically opposite tones as Thathi Thavudhu Manasu. At heart it is a tearjerker as it follows the plight of three helpless village girls stranded in the big, bad city. But like Mumtaj's song sequences and even individual scenes like the three girls being punished in school point to the movie being a cheap and vulgar flick. The director might have aimed at bringing in both the megaserial-loving women and the voyeurs with this dual strategy but it is likely to backfire and keep both target groups out of the cinema halls!

The producer seems to have banked on the film's glamour to bring in the viewers since that is what the title and the movie's promos focus on. This is unfortunate because the main story has actually been taken quite well. The attitudes and yearnings of the three girls are established well initially, laying the ground for their bold detour in the city. The hardships they subsequently encounter are not sugarcoated and they definitely succeed in earning our sympathy. There is also a twist regarding the true nature of one of the people they encounter, that manages to surprise us.

Mumtaj's songs and fights and Vadivelu's comedy provide breaks from the pessimistic tone of the rest of the movie. But they turn out to have the opposite effect. While Mumtaj's actions(like her glamorous disguise and song and dance to nab the bad guys) affect the realism of the rest of the movie, Vadivelu's comedy is so unfunny and crude that it pains us more than the sadness of the main story. The climax keeps up the sad tone and the director can be credited for not wrapping things up too conveniently.

Mumtaj looks quite fat but surprisingly, fights quite energitically inspite of that. 'Kalabhavan' Mani, not saddled with villainy or comedy, is tolerable and doesn't overact. The three debuting girls falter initially but get better as the movie proceeds. They convey their plight quite well and make us sympathise with them. Songs are forgettable though this must be the first time the lyrics for an entire paragraph have been changed on the orders of the censors (in Mumtaj's introduction song). This was entirely deserved since the original lyrics were extremely vulgar but a case of too little too late since they were already released as part of the soundtrack and the television promos.