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Kadhalikka Neramillai Movie Review: Ravi Mohan and Nithya Menen film is flatlined love story that offers little than it promises

Kadhalikka Neramillai Review: Despite strong performances by Nithya Menen and Ravi Mohan, it falls short of being an engaging, as it ultimately adheres to conventional norms on marriage and parenthood

2.5/5rating
Kadhalikka Neramillai Movie Review: Ravi Mohan and Nithya Menen film is flatlined love story that offers little than it promises
Kadhalikka Neramillai review

Last Updated: 01.32 PM, Jan 14, 2025

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Kadhalikka Neramillai Movie Story:

Shreya (Nithya Menen) is a Chennai-based architect who comes to know her partner is cheating on her just a few days before their wedding festivities. Meanwhile, Siddharth (Ravi Mohan) is a carefree structural engineer who doesn’t want to be boggled by marriage and children. A chain of events leads to Shreya getting pregnant through IVF treatment and sperm donation with what Siddharth had made around the same time.

Kadhalikka Neramillai Movie Review

Kadhalikka Nermaillai
Kadhalikka Nermaillai

Kadhalikka Neramillai is a film that strongly persuades you to think love can happen at any time, and it has mysterious ways to hold that connection if you have found the one. Everything that happens in the film is by sheer chance and luck. That Siddharth, who is vehemently against having children and settling down, accompanies his friends to a sperm bank to freeze (without a second thought of making a possible life-long decision) just because his homosexual friend Sethuraman (Vinay Rai) does it for his need. That Siddharth’s specimen accidentally becomes the sample for Shreya who has come for IVF treatment and gets pregnant in one go. That Siddharth and Shreya meet in the same bar by chance, and years later once more happen to live in the same apartment and get involved in the same project. There are no reasons or logic as to why the leads are constantly getting connected apart from the cinematic liberty that director Kiruthiga Udhayanidhi takes up.

Kadhalikka Neramillai wants you to believe that it is a “modern” love story, and that is why we have a brief mention of all the terms and ideologies that today’s world is teaching the past generation. When Shreya mentions she has PCOD as one of the reasons why she wants to have a child soon, or when Sethuraman is introduced as gay, the film feels it is being too pretentious and empathising with the concerns of today’s world. Although it is a welcome change to have these form within the narrative, the mentions do not have a significant contribution to the story, rendering it useless. Halfway through the film, we do not know what happened to Sethuraman’s character, nor how Shreya went through pregnancy with her PCOD. But where did the modernism go, when the body-shaming comment of calling Siddharth’s ex-girlfriend Nirupama (TJ Bhanu) as otada kutchi (broomstick)?

Kadhalikka Neramillai
Kadhalikka Neramillai

The story of Kadhalikka Neramillai is simple. Two people with different needs meet each other by chance and a spark between them is ignited by every other means than romance. There is a flavour of OK Kanmani, and it is not just the Nithya Menen connection. Just like the Mani Ratnam film self-contradicted itself with a couple who were so against marriage wed each other, Kadhalikka Neramillai too has a similar stance. It makes me wonder how long would Tamil cinema keep portraying characters that think outside the conventional settings of matrimony and parenting, only to fall into the box of what is deemed right by society towards the climax. While choosing to be a parent or not is a choice, and Siddharth falls under the latter, he too gets drawn into what the majority thinks. While I am all up for people to change their stance over a lifetime, when are we going to get films where the characters choose to remain with what is considered taboo by a larger society? Kadhalikka Neramillai could have been a good chance to talk about individuals who like to be child-free, but it too sticks to the traditions and understandings of what the majority wants. Despite strong performances by Nithya Menen and Ravi Mohan, the narrative falls short of being an engaging, thought-provoking film, as it ultimately adheres to conventional norms around marriage and parenthood.

Ravi Mohan and Nithya Menen are undoubtedly the pillars of Kadhalikka Neramillai, which has so little to offer to its supporting characters apart from shaming them. If TJ Bhanu is mocked for her skinny appearance, Vinay’s Sethuraman does not get a deserving character arc, given he is introduced to us as a queer character. In the process, Kadhalikka Neramillai falls short of being an engrossing and light watch despite the enthusiastic names attached to the project.

Kadhalikka Neramillai Movie Verdict

Kadhalikka Neramillai attempts to talk a modern love story, one where the couple are beyond their honeymoon phase of getting along. But in turn becomes a flatline narrative that does not explore issues in detail.

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