There are periods when you get a few good films in a row. You begin to think that Tamil cinema has become an industry that can be relied on to give a minimum quality product almost every time. But, then every now and then a film comes along to give us that hard pinch of reality, waking us from that dream. Maattuthavani falls into that second category mentioned above.

It is the same old ‘poor boy found fascinating by the rich girl’ stereotype. Then you have the girls dad who has rhyming dialogues like ‘Idhayakkani and Ezhara Sani’ to show that he can be dangerous (he is played by Kadhal Dhandapani). The boy does all kinds of odd jobs to pay his college fees. The girl somehow manages to convince him of her love. The dad obviously opposes. Then the director comes up with the most devious twist in the whole movie. Things get awry between the boy and girl. What happens after makes you wonder whether there was any love at all? The climax will leave you feeling numb and dull.

This should qualify as a library of clichés of Tamil cinema. All movies have their own shares of clichés and stereotypes; but Maattuthavani is a faithful aggregation of almost all available clichés. Of course, there are a few ‘original’ touches to the movie; like the girl gifting her lover with a bike and later with a car (now that definitely raises the bar for gifts among lovers!!).  And, after all this, the relationship falls apart, presumably even before the car lost its gloss. The original twists that the director has added to the movie actually do more damage than good. No one can go to such great extents (as shown in the movie) for such small matters unless they were off their mind.

There is not much to talk about in the technical sections. Truth is, the film lulls you so much that it doesn’t matter if the technical aspects are good or bad. There is only thing we can say about Maattuthavani. Let’s just hope it is an aberration that happens once in a long long time.

Verdict: Forget! That’s the best we can do.