Andha Naal Nyaabagam's director Manibharathi has learnt one thing right. He seems to know how to, at regular intervals, create moments that keep the viewer in suspense and get him hooked. Now he just needs to learn how to make the parts between those moments consistently entertaining too.

Guru(Ramana) and Raaga(Sridevika) end up as neighbors when Guru, a civil engineer, moves to Chennai to take up a job at a construction company. Guru loves Raaga but Raaga's sister(Indu), who has had a bitter experience in love, warns Raaga about falling in love. But Raaga loses her heart to Guru anyway. Things move smoothly until the arrival of Rita(Tejasri), who has her eyes on Guru from the moment she meets him.

Manibharathi crafts the screenplay in an interesting way. Most of the movie is a flashback and the scenes that launch the flashbacks are mounted in a way that makes us interested in how the flashback is going to play out. The break to the present just before the intermission is especially interesting. Though it eventually turns out to be a cheat, it does the job of making us look forward to the second half and get involved in it.

Sure the pre-intermission scene raises our interest and we become curious to see how the flashback is gonna play out after that. But barring a few scenes, the episodes that make up the actual flashback are rather uninspired and ordinary. The director uses tried and tested techniques to move the romance forward and we can predict, with great accuracy, what the next scene will be for most of the movie. Occassionally, there are a few flashes of good direction and dialogs(like the scene where Sridevika offers a solution to Ramana's dilemma) but proceedings are amateurish for the most part.

Vadivelu has a separate comedy track, which is always a sign of trouble. So he plays an important part in making the proceedings less than interesting. His first episode is a rather distasteful one involving people getting ill after eating in his hotel. The other episodes aren't quite as distasteful but the common feature among all the episodes is that they aren't funny!

Ramana, who seems to be getting by by showing up in some low-profile, low-budget films, is passable. But Sridevika is another addition to the list of wooden-faced actresses. She looks the same whether romancing with Ramana or being sad over the death of her dog. Tejasri tries hard to look classy while walking around in skimpy clothes but rarely succeeds.Ramji is OK in probably his first role where he doesn't have to dance.