• Sundar C, Director
• JiivaActor
• Amritha Aiyer, Actor
• JaiActor
• Yogi Babu, Actor
• Aishwarya Dutta, Actor

Coffee With Kadhal Movie Review: The story of Sundar C's Coffee With Kadhal begins in 1998, with three brothers fighting among themselves over a girl in school. Cut to the present and the film shows them still fighting between themselves because of their romantic relationships.

The elder brother Ravi (Srikanth), who is married to Radhika (Samyuktha), has a one-night stand with Sara (Raiza Wilson), who ends up engaged to his brother Saravanan (Jiiva), who, after being cheated on by his live-in partner Neetu (Aishwarya Dutta), falls in love with Diya (Malvika Sharma), who happens to be the fiancé of the youngest brother Kathir (Jai), who is trying to marry her only because he has eyes on her father's property, while he is actually in love with Abi (Amritha Aiyer), his childhood friend, who, after waiting for him all these years and finally realizing his intention, has agreed to marry a family friend (Ananth Nag).

If this complicated plot makes your head spin, the film furthers our sense of unease with weak writing, stilted performances, and horribly dated dialogues Sample these: "Wife-a wife-a paatha prechana dhaan. Wife-a life-a paaru!" "Attraction aayiram per mela varalam.. Aana affection oruthar kitta dhaan varum."

Still, the absurdity of the premise feels exactly the kind of material for Sundar C's brand of comedy, but for some reason, the director chooses to treat this like a drama and tries to be subtle, only to achieve exactly the opposite result. Restraint is not this director's strong point, and his attempt at a nuanced underplayed drama leads to greatly awkward moments, especially with the actors' performances coming across like they have been assembled from the NG takes. Yuvan Shankar Raja's background score tries to give us the feels with the oooos, aaaas, and mmmm, but only sticks out as a desperate attempt.

We see how much the film's entertainment quotient improves when he goes back to his trademark comedy of confusion in the pre-interval stretch. Even the actors seem more comfortable in these portions, and even if these moments are a patch on the comedy we have seen in his previous films, we realize how drastically different (read entertaining) the film would have turned into if only had the director taken this route. Maybe he could have played the 'This or that' game that the characters play in times of doubt and decided wisely to embrace his over-the-top style of comedy, he might have served us a Coffee With Kalakalappu instead of this flavorless concoction.