Seenu Ramaswamy gets his two lucky mascots, Udayanidhi Stalin ('Neerparavai' producer) and Tamannaah ('Dharmadurai' heroine) and strings a well-intentioned story that speaks about among other things, NEET, Farmer's plight, organic farming and the working woman's banes.
Kamalakannan (Udayanidhi Stalin) is the village do-gooder who is a defaulter in a bank due to his helping out his fellow humans. The new manager Bharathi (Tamannaah) puts pressure on him to pay up and then realizing his golden heart falls for him. How the couple handles their matured love and faces a huge tragedy together forms the rest of the screenplay.
Uday of late has experimented out of his comfort zone and 'Kannae Kalaimanae' too is a positive turn in his career after 'Nimir'. He has gone subtle throughout not even displaying heroism when he gets beaten up and impresses in love and sentimental scenes. Tamannaah as the deglam Bharathi has shown a lot of maturity in handling the varied layers in her character and the final twenty minutes are hers as she copes with a tragic ailment. Poo Ramu and Vadivukkarasi and Vasundhara are the other actors who have performed well.
What works best in 'Kannae Kalaimanae' is the family-friendly sentimental scenes especially the relationship between Uday and his father and grandmother. The big twist that is thrown in at the pre-climax also explains some loose ends in the first half and makes it more intense.
On the downside the pacing is painfully slow and the social commentaries on NEET and farmers are forced into the screenplay. For most parts there is no purpose or direction in the proceedings until the twist is thrown in a bit too late.
Yuvan Shankar Raja has scored some old fashioned songs that gell with the story and as usual his background score compliments the film. Jalandhar Vasan's camera and Kasi Viswanathan's editing are on par as well. Seenu Ramaswamy has once again chosen a message oriented script and has kept it clean till the end. However the film suffers due to the lack of entertaining or engaging elements which the audience would obviously expect.
Verdict : Go for it for the fine performances of Uday, Tamannaah and Vadivukkarasi
