With masala being by far the predominant genre in Tamil cinema, films intended - or even suitable - for viewing by children are a rarity. With its fantasy-laced story and clean, humorous screenplay, Panchamirtham can be seen as a film that falls into that rare category. Its no classic. It is amateurish, its humor doesn't work consistently and it fails to fully exploit the possibilities afforded by its story. But the novelty and originality of its plot help carry it past those deficiencies.

The movie begins in the past as Mareechan(Jayaram), who lured Rama out to facilitate Seetha's kidnapping by Ravana, has a fight with Idumban(Raju Easwaran) and after defeating him, turns him into an anklet and wears him on his leg. When Mareechanis killed by Rama, he begs for forgiveness. We then move to the present day, where Seetha(Saranya) joins the household of Rajaraman(Nasser) as his PA. But Rajaraman's family members, who are slowly stealing his wealth, see Seetha as anenemy and hire Pandi(Karunas) to eliminate her. But his plan leads to Seetha freeing Mareechan, who then agrees to help her. So its now time for Saranya to turn the tables on her enemies. But Idumban, who is inadvertently freed by a fisherman Manickam(Nasser) and agrees to help him, has a score to settle with Mareechan too.

The film's humor is mostly juvenile but the good thing is that it gets better as the movie progresses. Inspite of the rich material to mine jokes from, the laughs from Karunas' plight at the hands of Saranya are of the hit-and-miss variety. It is possible to laugh at his futile run from the house but his grab to avoid falling of the imaginary cliff is not so funny. The introduction of the second Nasser with his Madras slang, though it confuses the story, does help the humor quotient. Idumban's dialogs and their subsequent translations are almost always funny and the reactions of the other members after a switching of places is funny too.

Apart from using mythology to add elements of fantasy, the movie goes one step further and draws parallels between the past and the present. With many of the characters having variations of the names of mythological characters, we do look forward to these parallels. The recreation of the scenario of Seetha being restricted by the Lakshman Rekha and crossing it to be abducted, but with a small switch in the characters involved, is the cleverest touch but a few other moments, like Akash imitating his mythological namesake, are nicely brought about too. But the film doesn't have enough of these to make us exhilarated about the cleverness of the screenplay and resorts to amateurish comedy and cheap graphics to close out the film.

Nasser proves his versatility, playing 2 very different characters very convincingly. Saranya gets another role that capitalises on her sweet, girl-next-door looks but her acting skills aren't really tested. The film has quite a few comedians in supporting roles and though all of them have their moments and one-liners, none of them stand out. With a plot that combines elements of mythology and the present day, Panchamirtham can be termed as an ambitious movie. But it lacks the production values to match the ambition. The special effects are really tacky and no effort has been made to make the film look rich. Better special effects have been in seen in television serials.