While Bharath had a series of interesting movies and roles in the early part of his career, he too jumped onto the masala bandwagon with a vengeance. The romantic Kanden Kaadhalai gave us a brief hope that he might not be averse to taking on other genres but that turned out to be short-lived as he returns with Thambikku Indha Ooru. Dated, cliched and predictable, it is the kind of film that gives masala a bad name.

Akhil(Bharath) runs a restaurant in Singapore. When his dad's friend suggests that Akhil marry his daughter Priya, Akhil reveals that he was already in love with Divya(Sana Khan), a squash player, who had since gone back to India. The friend, distraught over this, reveals that Akhil was in fact adopted. So Akhil goes to India in search of his biological parents, armed with the information that his dad was an ambulance driver at a hospital near Chingleput. In Chennai, he runs into Thangasamy(Prabhu), a dada, and his sworn enemy Thirumalai(Ranjith), both of whom turn out to have a close link to Akhil's past.

Starting with the forced damsel-in-distress situation that showcases Bharath's heroism and love of Tamil, the film bombards us with old and tired cliches one after the other. The romance is silly and contrived and Bharath comes off looking rather bad with his plans to woo Sana Khan(the fact that she falls for him after these plans doesn't speak too highly of her either). The cliches are capped off by the oldest one in the book - Bharath finding out that he is adopted at a party - but even the lame twist isn't done right as it is unnecessarily hinted at earlier.

What's a masala film without a rowdy? Here its Prabhu who is a powerful dada (but a 'good' one as indicated by his introduction, where he helps out a policeman). But just as the film looks like it is gathering some speed by pitting Bharath against him, it comes to a complete standstill as Bharath goes to Hyderabad. It is painfully obvious as a means of padding the running time since it simply postpones the all-important meeting between Bharath and Prabhu without actually achieving anything. The director makes no efforts to even make things interesting and uses it as a comedy segment with M.S.Bhaskar as a bumbling dada who is after Bharath. The complete lack of logic and the realization that this adds nothing to the main storyline ensure that the comedy falls flat also.

The film takes a convoluted route to reach a predictable conclusion after that. The big surprise can be seen a mile away but the film plods through several twists, turns and coincidences before it actually reveals it. And there is no drama or tension since the director follows the masala route by adding humor whatever the situation. So seriousness or suspense are non-existent(like in the segment where Bharath is trying to find his roots but chooses to do it with Vivek in disguises that remind us of a similar enquiry by Rajni and Prabhu in Guru Sishyan).

Bharath imitates Vijay whether he is romancing Sana Khan or fighting off goons. Sana Khan doesn't have much to do and with a physiotherapist who doubles as Vivek's pair, the sequences where she does anything related to squash end up looking more like jokes. In recent movies, Prabhu has ended up as a laughing stock but this is the rare film where he is the best thing in it. He takes his role seriously and helps keep the movie from becoming completely ridiculous. Vivek gets a chance to do a take-off on Kamal's Naidu role in Dasaavathaaram and gets the body language and accent just right though the segment doesn't lead to as many laughs as expected. Ranjith makes an appearance after a break but is saddled with a cliched villain role that he can't do much with.