Vijay, who at one point was primarily known as a romantic hero, took the masala route when he encountered a string of flops with his romantic movies. Vishal appears to be taking the opposite route as the actor who was shaping up as an action hero, tries his hand at romance after two big flops in Sathyam and Thoranai. But its a half-hearted effort as neither Vishal nor the director is able to turn their backs on action and Vishal's image completely. So Theeraadha Vilaiyaattu Pillai ends up stuck between being a wishy-washy romance and a weak actioner.

Karthik(Vishal) wants to always have the best in life and he ensures that by analyzing several options before making his choice. He extends the same policy to the woman he is going to spend the rest of his life with and so decides to select three women to fall in love with and then pick one to wed. His choices are Jyoti(Tanushree Datta), a man-hater, Priya(Sara-Jane Dias), an idealist who wants to fall in love once with the right man and marry him, and Tejaswini(Neetu Chandra), the heiress to an enormous fortune. Karthik follows different approaches to woo them and succeeds in making all 3 women fall for him.

The film avoids painting Vishal as a playboy by giving him a reason - a policy - for carrying on multiple romances at the same time. But that doesn't translate to his character having any more depth as he shows no seriousness and spends no time in picking the 3 contenders for the woman he is going to spend the rest of his life with. We never understand what exactly he wants in the woman of his dreams since the three women have nothing in common and his selection just seems arbitrary. It doesn't come as a big surprise that the three women Vishal chooses fare even worse. We know only enough about them as required for the story to move forward and the little we do get to know isn't too flattering.

With such poorly-developed characters, its no wonder that Vishal's acts and lies to win the three girls' love barely evoke our interest. The film quickly becomes repetitive as we get a scene of Vishal with his three friends followed by one scene each of him impressing each of the heroines and this sequence is repeated for a while. And the proclamation of Vishal that three North Indian heroines were chosen to maintain the suspense about who he will eventually end up with is quickly proved song since it is pretty clear who he will pick, from the first time we see the three women.

From a romantic comedy, the movie suddenly morphs into a different genre as Vishal is pitted against one of the women. While this does relieve us from the tedium of watching 3 uninspired romances, the fighting doesn't make things any more interesting than the romancing. The woman's plans are complicated and feeble and inspite of a few surprising moments, there are no sparks when Vishal and her go up. Vishal's challenges and gloats also sound chauvinistic, especially when he rationalizes his actions with some lame reasons.

The climax is overly sentimental but does scale it back a bit at the end. But every movie that features a hero with a roving eye finishes with a cameo by a popular actress and TVP too does the same.

Vishal seems as uncomfortable with comedy as he was in Sathyam and he isn't all that smooth when it comes to romance either. He is fine when it comes to bashing up rowdies though. Neetu Chandra, looking very different from how she looked in Yaavarum Nalam, is the only actress who makes an impression. Tanushree Datta is more at ease sparring with Vishal than cozying up to him while Sara has a blank expression most of the time and her bad lip sync prevents her from conveying her emotions. Santhanam has the choices lines among the three friends but Sathyan too gets a few laughs. En Jannal... is the pick of the songs as its music and lyrics change in each stanza to describe each of the 3 women. The title song is catchy and picturized eye-catchingly with bright colors and flashy costumes. Oru Punnagai Thaane... and En Aasai Edhiraaliye... feature some nice locales but the dancing, by Vishal in the former and by Neetu Chandra in the latter, take our attention from the locales and not in a good way.