If Pasanga, with its natural and humorous depiction of the children's lives, was at one end of the spectrum when it comes to children's films in Tamil, Vannathu Poochi is at the other end. While its guilty of pushing children to the sidelines while it follows the dual goals of extolling village life and condemning city life, the bigger issue is that it puts forth its argument with gross exaggerations and unrealistic characterizations.

Divya(Srilakshmi), the 8-year-old daughter of software engineers Arun and Chitra, feels lonely and abandoned as her parents barely have time for her amidst their busy schedules. When Arun's school headmaster visits them, Divya learns about Arun's father, with whom Arun has severed all contact. She accompanies the headmaster back to his village and meets her grandfather Chinnasamy(Bala Singh). As she spends time with him, she finally gets the love and affection she was yearning for.

Vannathu Poochi feels like a blatant social commentary in the guise of a children's movie. It has an 8-year-old girl as its central figure and is ostensibly about her search for love and affection. But it simply uses her to deliver an indictment of city life and sing praises of life in the village. While the story is about Srilakshmi meeting family she never knew existed and experiencing their love and affection, she soon becomes a secondary figure in the director's agenda of criticizing the materialistic and unemotional city life and portraying village life as heaven on earth.

Its not wrong for a director to try and put forth his opinion through his film. But Azhagappan serves up his ideas in such an exaggerated and heavy-handed way that the message gets completely lost. The software engineers here are completely unrealistic and brazen caricatures whose behavior is completely unreal, even taking into consideration the fact that they are busy. The villagers aren't as shabbily realized but every single one of them is so good-hearted, so kind and so affectionate that the whole thing is just as unrealistic. The scenes in the village do work in portraying the simple, honest nature of life in the village. But for every effective scene(like Srilakshmi getting Bala Singh a shirt), there's one(like the way she puts together the money for it) that damages its effectiveness by being cinematic.

Like Dhevadhaiyai Kanden, Vannathu Poochi finally comes down to a unique court case(Revathi has a cameo as the judge). The result isn't a big surprise since the movie has made its agenda very clear but on the positive side, the film doesn't force any unbelievable character changes that would've negated the little impact it has, completely.

The over-the-top nature of the proceedings is further highlighted by the amateurish performances from most of the cast. Bala Singh takes a break from his villainous roles and is effective as the grandfather who tries to makeup for lost time with his granddaughter. But the rest of the cast disappoints. Srilakshmi is not a natural and some of the dialogs she is given make her seem too precocious. Siddharth and Madhavi are completely artificial.