Aagaya Thamaraigal (Suresh, Revathy) certainly doesn’t win any points for originality: it carries the same storyline we’ve seen in a million times in village-based films – the star-crossed lovers, the evil male guardian, the irritating comedy breaks, and so on. Despite the fundamentally cliched nature of the story, it does manage to give some more enjoyable moments than usual. The story revolves around Shekhar (Suresh), who is a bank official visiting the village where Revathy’s character resides. Their initial interactions are extremely hostile, but gradually they soften up to each other and end up in love – to the predictable disapproval of Satyaraj’s character. I felt there were mild overtones of Mullum Malarum due to the “outsider in a village” nature of Shekhar’s character, though Aagaya Thamaraigal never manages to reach the same level of quality.
Mostly it is the interactions between the lead characters that I enjoyed the most. Their initial arguments provide much more humour than the comedians give, mostly because Suresh and Revathy have nice on-screen chemistry particularly when at loggerheads with each other (they have a similar sort of rivalry in Marumagal). When the core conflicts really emerge, the film is less engaging because the dramatic portions are simply too predictable. The ending is also rather contrived, and Satyaraj’s character (who I suppose would be the antagonist) doesn’t really have any depth. I can’t quite put this one on the “Good Film List”, but it is a decent enough time-pass. I also rather enjoy the song Anandha Vellathile, which appears midway through the film and features some beautiful extended melodic lines – and Malaysia Vasudevan is excellent here. Surprise – the composer is not Ilaiyaraja, but rather Gangai Amaren.
