One of the biggest stars in Telugu cinema right now is NTR Junior, grandson of N.T.Ramarao. With Success, Tamil cinema gets its own third-generation hero - Junior Sivaji (or Dushyanth), grandson of 'Sivaji' Ganesan. It is quite safe to say that he doesn't create quite the splash his grandfather created with his debut. Dushyanth exhibits no differentiation from the several other new heroes Tamil cinema has seen recently. Like most of them, he dances and fights quite well but has ways to go before being called a good actor.

Ganesh(Junior Sivaji) thinks the world of his sister Radhika(Roja), who had walked out of her own marriage and devoted her life to raise him. A couple of incidents leads Radhika to think that Ganesh and Shweta(Sonia Agarwal) are in love and she goes to Shweta's house to fix up their marriage. But she is insulted there and an enraged Ganesh vows to take revenge on Shweta. But his revenge ends up having repercussions in the life of Maha(Nandhana), a Brahmin girl from an orthodox family.

With Dushyant apparently not working and spending time cracking cheap jokes with his group of friends, the movie doesn't start of with much promise. A couple of funny lines(like Karunas' lament to Dushyanth about his wife's response when he asked her for a glass of tea) are scattered around but the majority of the jokes are cheap or lame or both. Needless fights and an 'item' number with Jennifer don't help matters either. Things start moving with Roja's suspicions about Dushyanth and Sonia Agarwal. But her insult and Dushyanth's anger don't have much of an effect on us since she brought it upon herself by jumping to conclusions without investigating the issue. Dushyanth's MO for revenge is also strange since its never clear what he hopes to achieve.

But Success manages to pack quite an unexpected surprise after this. Until then, all the pieces are in place for a regular love story. We have the brave and goodhearted hero, a rich heroine, an affectionate sister and a suitor for the heroine to make up a love triangle. Once Roja is insulted and Dushyanth swears revenge, we think the rest of the story is easily predictable. But the movie surprises us with a nice turn of events. It definitely energizes the movie and gets us interested again. Looking back on the first half after this, we realize that the movie has actually been quite clever in setting up stock characters but in a slightly different way that makes the twist surprising.

Unfortunately the movie is unable to sustain the interest that the twist brought about. The movie starts to rely on situations that have been seen before in movies like Jodi, where the hero tries to hide his identity and impress the heroine and her family. But none of Dushyanth's actions are particularly novel or cute. But the comedy gets noticably better during these portions with Urvasi playing a large part in the improvement. Several sequences, like her encounter with the rowdy who is egged on by Karunas, are funny because of her dialog delivery.

Dushyanth's smile reminds one of Mithun(from Indru Mudhal) in making the viewer wonder if he is smiling or unhappy. He could really use some work in the emotional scenes. Sonia Agarwal looks pretty while Nandhana looks homely and fits her role nicely. But the latter gets the meatier part and impesses in the couple of serious scenes. Roja appears to have put on some weight and seems disinterested in the proceedings. Y.G.Mahendran and Riyaz Khan are adequate while Urvasi gets a few scenes that show off her comic timing.