Low-profile romances, usually helmed by a debutant director and featuring a new face as the hero, get released with good regularity in Tamil cinema. While we've had a few pleasant surprises among such movies (Odippolaamaa was a recent one), most end up being disappointments that don't do much for the career of either the director or the actor. Yaathumaagi falls in this category too with its weak characterization and poor screenplay.

Anand(Sachin) is an ad film photographer and though he is pursued by many girls, he has no interest in any of them and steers clear of them. Annalakshmi(Sunaina), who lives with her father, falls for Anand the minute she lays eyes on him and is pleasantly surprised when he ends up as the tenant at her house. But Anand is oblivious to her feelings for him and gives his consent when his parents fix his wedding up with another girl.

Yaathumaagi is essentially a love story between two people with very contrasting natures. Sachin is a self-absorbed, almost selfish guy who rarely thinks about anyone but himself. He neither notices others nor takes note of their feelings and he has no time for sentiments or emotions. Sunaina is his exact opposite on every count. She cares about others(even when it comes love, her dad always figures in her plans) and is an incurable romantic. But considering that the story is completely character-based, the characters are very weak and inconsistent beyond these basic definitions. So the romance between them is also plagued by those same problems.

Among the two, Sunaina definitely comes off worse. The foundation for her love is rather shaky but atleast that can be explained away by the vagaries of love. But her behavior after that isn't very consistent either. Her emotions(like the anger at Sachin using her photo without her permission or her disappointment at the fact that he didn't notice the contents of her letter) change or disappear rather abruptly and so she comes off looking very flaky. Sachin is more consistent(even if his aloofness is a little overdone) but his transformation isn't graphed very smoothly or convincingly. So when he shows that he is in love too, we aren't sure whether its out of pity or whether he has actually developed feelings.

With two such characters, its no surprise that the relationship between them lacks any sort of depth. The final roadblock between them is telegraphed early and is a considerably big one but the film doesn't do justice to the enormity of it. And after sitting through the entire journey, it is frustrating when the film doesn't even deliver the final payoff satisfactorily, opting to have a character simply narrate what happened.

Sachin looks a bit like Revathi's ex-husband Suresh Menon. He is quite wooden and while this is not very noticeable initially, it hurts when he tries to display emotions of any kind later in the film. Sunaina is sweet and pretty even if she has to hit just one note most of the time. James Vasanthan's songs sound a bit old-fashioned with Thigatta Thigatta... and Pesum Minsaaram... being the picks of tha album. The picturization adds nothing special though.