If you are one of those who watches every Tamil movie and are desperate enough to rent Engalukkum Kaalam Varum, expecting a laugh riot after looking at the cast, let me tell you a way by which you can save the rental fee and still get the experience of watching the movie. First pick out your favorite comedy sequences from recent movies starring Vivek. Now go back a little further to select sequences with Manivannan or Vadivelu that made you laugh the most. Once you have enough of these to make a full-length movie, imagine the complete opposite of the movie you have imagined. What you now have is Engalukkum Kaalam Varum. It is a completely laugh-impaired, loud and crude movie that lets its funny cast go completely waste.

Mannangatti(Manivannan) is the money-obsessed father of three daughters, Lakshmi(Kausalya), Pooja(Kasturi) and Teja(Vinitha), and one son Vellaiyan(Vadivelu). When Kuppan(Livingston), a rustic relative comes to stay with them, he is treated badly by not just Mannangatti, but also Pooja and Teja. When Mannangatti drives Kuppan out of the house, Lakshmi marries him and alongwith her mother, steps out of the house. Vellaiyan is tricked into marrying Jennifer('Kovai' Sarala), who lives in the slums and raises pigs, and moves out to live with them too. Meanwhile, Mannangatti selects Santosh(Vivek), a rich man from abroad, to wed Pooja while Ramesh(Karan), a man looking for a rich girl to wed, is selected for Teja. Expectedly, Lakshmi and co. prosper while Mannangatti and his other two daughters' situations go from good to bad to worse.

The moral of the story here is that its family and not money that is important, but what a torturous route the director makes us take to tell us that! While his intention to make a comedy is clear from his selection of actors, he has failed to back it up with a script that is funny. As a result, it is almost sad to see Vivek, Manivannan and Vadivelu try hard to inject some humor into the bland lines they are forced to spout. This translates into an assault on our eardrums as they try to overcome the lack of humor with noise by shouting out their dialogs as if that automatically makes them funny.

In several recent movies starring Vivek, I have looked forward to the comedy track to provide some relief from the main story. But the situation is reversed here. As the comedians tried unsuccessfully to be funny, I began looking forward to sequences involving Livingston and Kausalya to restore some semblance of sanity to the cacophony created by the funny men. But they are all but sidelined in the proceedings as they stand mutely watching the antics of the comedians in most scenes.

It is amazing how the director manages to elicit the least laughs out of situations that sound atleast marginally funny on paper. Anyone should be able to mine more out of Vivek's role as a foreign returned millionaire and his having a female robot as a sidekick. Even Vadivelu being fooled by 'Kovai' Sarala sounds funnier than watching it on screen.

Livingston is calm as demanded by the role while Kausalya over-emotes as usual. But even her performance could be deemed subtle compared to Vinitha. Her acting is completely artificial and irritating. Vivek cuts a sorry figure as he lamely tries to evoke laughs from lines that are dead from the start. His character has even more shades of villainy that in Looty and that doesn't make things better. Vadivelu is crude as always while Manivannan ambles along being insulted by almost everyone. Karan is listless playing another one of his trademark greedy roles.

In the climax, Vivek, the only unreformed member of the cast, keeps repeating "Indha torture thaanga mudiyalappaa". He could very well have been talking about the movie.