At heart, Kurumbu has a familar but sweet story of friendship and unspoken love. But it wraps the story in a rather unsavoury package. In the tradition of recent youth-targeted movies like Boys, it focuses more on the hero's libido rather than freshness or novelty in story-telling.

Ravi(Naresh) and Aparna(Nikita) have been friends since childhood and live in the same apartment complex. Into the same complex moves Ruchi(Diya), a rich girl who has as many boyfriends as dresses. Ravi falls for Ruchi and asks for Aparna's help to impress her. Aparna helps him, while at the same time hiding her own feelings for Ravi.

The love triangle in Kurumbu is almost identical to the one in Vijay's Badri. As in that case, we have the hero falling for a rich girl while failing to realise that the girl he considers his best friend is actually in love with him. But here, the antics of the hero are so juvenile and the rich girl is such a brazen caricature that their romance never seems even a tad realistic. On Diya's first visit to Naresh's house he ogles her and pours juice down her top while on his trip to her house, he sprays her makeup on and wears her bra! And Diya is the cliched rich girl of Tamil cinema with perennially short dresses and multiple boyfriends and making frequent trips to discotheques.

The friendship between Naresh and Nikita is portrayed in a better fashion (though the overuse of dis tends to get on our nerves). Nikita's selfless help and her sorrow as she watches Naresh and Diya do manage to earn our sympathy though the understated scenes(like when Naresh takes Diya on his new bike) work better. If we look beyond Naresh's antics, his relationship with Diya has some sweet moments also. Their return trip from the discotheque is quite funny and their actions are natural. But after more than three-quarters of the film, both Naresh and Diya display sudden changes in their character, inconsistent with their behavior so far. While Naresh has a sudden attack of morality, Diya begins to spout philosphies about true love.

The movie avoids having a separate comedy track, which is appreciable. But the track involving Nasser and Meera seems worse. It is unnecessary and vulgar. Though it ends before becoming too vulgar, the little that happens left me squirming in my seat.

Naresh, the hero of the Telugu version also, overacts right from the word go. His expressions and actions might have been intended for comic effect but he simply ends up looking silly and moronic most of the time. Nikita has the role that earns her audience sympathy and performs adequately. Diya fits the role of the rich girl and is quite comfortable in front of the camera. Nasser is his usual self though his character takes a hit in the later portions while 'Pyramid' Natrajan earns a few chuckles with his sardonic dialog delivery and his miserliness. Yuvan Shankar Raja's tunes are modern and loud.