Arumuga Kumar’s debut movie Oru Nalla Naal Paathu Solren is a quirky comedy drama that’s a bit hit and miss. When it’s right, the film is pretty funny, but more often than not, the situations and the dialogue aren’t amusing at all, and it’s hard to know exactly what Arumuga Kumar was trying to achieve. It’s frustrating too since there are some good ideas that should have worked much better, mixed in with a few too many tired and clichéd scenes. According to the subtitles, the title means “I’ll tell you when the auspicious time is right”, and a number of the characters repeat this line at various intervals. Since it’s impossible to tell what is really going on for the first hour of the film, I was hoping that someone would finally decide that the auspicious time was right sooner rather than later, but it does all finally come clear at the end.

The film starts with a short astronomy and geography lesson voiced by Vijay Sethupathi, starting in deep space and finishing in a small village somewhere in Andhra Pradesh – Yamasingapuran. The village is inhabited by around 200 tribal villagers, who wear black, drape themselves in gold and worship Yama. They are led by Yeman (Vijay Sethupathi) and his mother Arumugakumar (Viji Chandrasekhar) who appear appropriately outlandish and over the top to rule a group of death-god worshipers somewhere out in the forest.

The villagers are a very proficient clan of thieves, and as their star performer, Yeman is sent to Chennai on a mission to steal more gold. Also, along on the trip are his two side-kicks, the competent if rather unenterprising Purushothaman (Ramesh Thilak) and Sathish (Daniel Annie Pope) – a bumbling failure whose antics must have sounded funnier on paper than they turn out on film.

While robbing a house in Chennai, Yeman spots a photograph of someone he calls Abhaayalakshmi, but who is actually Soumiya (Niharika Konidela), a fresher college student who is blissfully unaware of the existence of Yeman and Yamasingapuran. Unfortunately for her, she is about to become closely acquainted with both. Convinced that Soumiya is Abhaayalakshmi, Yeman and his inept associates fumble around using various ridiculous disguises in an attempt to ‘steal’ (ie kidnap) Soumiya and take her back to their village. Foiling their plans is Harish (Gautham Karthik) and his best friend Narasimhan (Rajkumar), for no real reason other than Harish finds Soumiya attractive.

Harish is a male version of a typical ditzy Tamil heroine, complete with half-baked ideas, ridiculous clothes that are totally unsuitable for a rescue mission to a forest, and an unnatural attraction to his sunglasses. This works well, for the most part, although some of the situations are too predictable to be funny, while others are simply not funny in the first place. However, there are some moments where dialogue, situation and character all come together and work perfectly – there just needed to be a few more of these. Gautham Karthik is fine but since his character is such an idiot it’s difficult to empathise and feel much connection to Harish. It’s quite a departure from his last role in Rangoon though and he doesn’t do badly with the comedy he has, so it will be interesting to see what he does next.

More reliably amusing is Vijay Sethupathi’s laconic portrayal of a desperate man in search of his long-lost bride. He gets to wear a succession of ridiculous wigs and costumes, but it’s the matter of fact attitude that Vijay Sethupathi exudes that makes his appearance so funny. Adding to this is his rationality when faced with all the absurdity of his mother, Harish and his misguided rescue attempt, and the multitude of mistakes made by Purushothaman and Sathish. Although Yeman is more subdued when in Chennai, once the action moves back to the village, the film does get funnier as everyone gets more and more outrageous.

Less successful are the characters of Narasimhan and Sathish. Both are bumbling idiots whose slapstick is presumably supposed to add more humour, but mostly falls flat while having two similar characters just makes it even more obvious that this type of comedy really isn’t funny. Both actors do their best with what they are given, but none of their dialogue is even remotely funny, and even their interactions with Harish and Yeman fail to raise more than the odd smile. I also have little to say about Niharika Konidela who didn’t live much of an impression at all. This is through no real fault of the actress, but she just had very little to do for most of the film.

Gayathrie Shankar is the one person who gets to play a reasonably straight role and she does it beautifully, making me wish that she had more to do in the film. She is so much better here than in her last outing with Vijay in Puriyaatha Puthir which has made me move Naduvula Konjam Pakkatha Kaanom to the top of the ‘to-be-watched’ pile. While Gayathrie needs to ensure her character Godavari is relatively sensible to make the role work wihin the story, Viji Chandrasekhar needed to be crazier as Yeman’s mother Arumugakumar. Apart from a few wide-eyed stares, she’s actually quite restrained which is a shame since the film needed the sort of boost that only a totally OTT ma character can bring. A lost opportunity for sure!

Oru Nalla Naal Paathu Solren is a film that is funny in short bursts, and the overall impression is of a screenplay that didn’t get enough time to fully mature before being harvested for the big screen. Vijay Sethupathi is as watchable as ever and there are enough funny moments to make this worth seeing in the cinema, but expect to be mildly entertained rather than crying with laughter.