Vaayai Moodi Pesavum

If his debut film Kadhalil Sodhappuvadhu Yeppadi was an irreverent rom-com, in his second effort Balaji Mohan gives us a high-concept comedy which, in its second half, is entirely a silent film. Well, almost. Many of its tropes must be familiar to those who have seen enough Hollywood comedies and rom-coms. A do-gooder hero with a dream, a heroine with a jerk of a boyfriend, her somewhat dysfunctional family (here, it includes a forever busy dad, stepmom who has stopped writing to take care of the family and whom the heroine isn't ready to accept yet, a stepbrother who flunks in his class but is highly creative), a charity organization that faces eviction, and so on. But the director shows that you only need a bit of invention to turn routine into unique.

The film is set in Panimalai, a fictional mountain town, where the hero Arvind ( Dulquer Salmaan, making a sparkling debut in Tamil) is a salesperson. As he tells a character, he cannot stop himself from mending things that are broken. He believes that every issue can be resolved if the parties involved talk sensibly to each other. The heroine, Anjana (Nazriya), is diminutive, doesn't talk much and obliges to her boyfriend's dictates (no specs, only contacts and so on). Meanwhile, interesting (read absurd) things are happening in the town. An association of drunks is protesting against a film star (John Vijay as Nuclear Star Boomesh) for defaming them in his movie, but most importantly, a mysterious illness is spreading in the town which results in people losing their voice. The government declares this as dumb flu, and quarantines the entire town. The health minister ( R Pandiarajan), who is stationed there, embarrasses himself in an interview (which results in a funny YouTube mash-up video) and to save himself, announces that he is infected with the flu. And, following researchers the advice of researchers, the government implements a curfew forcing all individuals of the hill station from speaking. Will this l...