Official Trailer:

 [SPOILERS AHEAD…]

Sivanesan (Raj Kiran), father of Murugan (Dhanush) owns and runs an Idli eatery in a small village. Idlis and its accompaniments, sambar and chutney, are prepared in traditional way – using manual stone grinders – aattukal and ammikal. Villagers are fan of his cooking and big patrons. It is a landmark for the village. Murugan wants his father to switch to electric grinders. Father doesn’t want to since it lacks the human touch – kai pakkuvam. Murugan has ideas for opening franchises, but Sivanesan pushes back on the idea since he can be only in one place at a time to cook and doesn’t want to lend his name with someone else as the cook. Murugan wants to move to city and make it big. Sivanesan questions the success metric. This is an excellent existential question. Murugan leaves the village, goes to Bangkok and makes it big in a food corporation. He is about to get married to owner’s (played by Sathyaraj) daughter. During the pre-wedding party he gets the message that his father has passed away. He comes back to the village for the last rites. Did he go back? What happens to the Idli Kadai is the rest of the story.

First half moves in a predictable way. Simple melodrama. No surprises. Yes, Murugan stays back in the village. Yes, calls off the marriage. Yes, takes the mantle of the Idli Kadai. It is not an easy path. He has to figure out how to recreate the taste and get to the standards his father has set. How does he get there? This portion played out like Devar or Ramanarayanan films – help from higher power comes in dreams, in the form of calf, and weird feeling he gets during the pre-wedding party 😀 Hey, you need to move the story forward, right!! You know the villain has to show up and waiting for when. He does show up in the form of Ashwin (Arun Vijay), owner’s son. He has few scores to settle with Murugan – he is not for the marriage of Murugan to his sister, and his father putting him down in front of Murugan. Once Ashwin arrives, movie takes an interesting turn. Like his father Murugan believes in non-violence. This is a great premise similar to moving back to the village/roots. Non-violence parts are better written than settling in the village. Getting back to your roots doesn’t ask the hard questions – is he missing the corporate, power, villas, and money. They all get crossed over with few lines of dialogue. Movie pushes or rather glorifies the point that tradition is always good. Writing misses the details on how he builds the trust of the villagers to stand behind him. Just changing to attire (similar to Devar Magan, Nattamai) similar to his father isn’t going to get the taste back. Villagers stand behind him because he is the son of the soil who came back – one line of dialogue fills the gap. Meera’s (Shalini Pandey) character is weakly sketched, and Kayal’s (Nithya Menen) portions are pretty basic – not much scope to perform. Raj Kiran rehashes the father’s role umpteenth time, and he does a good job of what is given to him. Similarly, Sathyraj plays well the role of father who is unable to control his son due to misplaced affection. We know there is a slap coming and it does towards the end 🤣 Movie would have done better without Samuthirakani’s bad guy role. Parthiban plays the cop role – this is one role written well with shades of grey. Arun Vijay does a good job of a spoiled brat. But one slap changes him!! Movie is watchable but left me with the feel that movie would have been much better if writing has gone through few more rounds in stone grinder!!