Kundakka Mandakka is simply overkill. The Parthiban-Vadivelu team was successful in Bharathi Kannamma and created a very memorable comedy track. But Cheran himself could not recreate the magic in Vettrikkodi Kattu. Ashok, the director here has not learned from that and worse, has made a bigger mistake. While Cheran repeated a comedy track, Ashok goes one step further to make a full movie out of it.

Ilango(Parthiban) is a swindler for whom money is everything. He himself is in love with a rich girl Roopa(Lakshmi Rai) and he aims to marry his sister Kavitha(Mallika) off to a millionaire. When he hears that a poor auto driver Nandha is in fact a millionaire, he draws up plans to make him and sister fall in love. But his plan backfires when Nandha turns out to be poor. But Kavitha falls in love with him anyway.

The teaming of Parthiban and Vadivelu still holds some appeal. There are few who can do lollu quite as well as Parthiban and Vadivelu is usually at his funniest when he himself is the target of jokes. So their initial encounters have a few laughs and some jokes, like the way of splitting a vadai among brothers and the Kudaikkul Mazhai comment, are even clever. But even good things have their limits and that limit is reached real soon(I think it was after their 2nd encounter) here. The jokes after that seem repetitive and fail to raise laughs. A couple of segments towards the end have the potential to be funny but fail because we've had our fill by then.

Watching the film is like reading only the jokes in a magazine. Somebody needs to tell the director that a film needs to be more than a collection of jokes thrown together. Aspects essential to a film, like character backgrounds, continuity and logic, don't seem to have been part of his gameplan at all. For instance, Lakshmi Rai, a rich girl, is in love with Parthiban but there is no explanation as to why or even how it happened and Parthiban loves her too but steals money from her. Since these are the lead characters in the film, you can imagine the state of the supporting characters.

With the movie relying on the duo of Parthiban and Vadivelu, the main story is reduced to the level of a filler sidetrack. The track proceeds with some direction since we are fairly sure that, by the end of it, Parthiban will realize that money is not everything in life. The problem is that the track is not left alone. With Vadivelu being an integral part of the plans, with or without Parthiban's knowledge, this track is also dominated by them. It culminates in a long climax in a marriage hall that really tests our patience.

One can only hope that Parthiban is acting in movies like these to pay his bills and invest in movies like Kudaikkul Mazhai. Lakshmi Rai must be the cleanest actress in Tamil cinema considering how many times she takes a shower in this film! Her costume in the second half is limited to a towel, which should illustrate her part in the scheme of things. Vadivelu does what he usually does while Mallika seems to have become the leading candidate to play the hero's sister.