It's Rajni all the way in this unevenly-paced, long movie which plays more like "Can you spot the other movie where Rajni has done this?".

The story (for those of you who have been in a coma since the beginning of this year!)... The movie starts with village headman(Sivaji) proclaiming in front of the whole village that no wedding would ever take place in that village without the consent of the bride and the groom.

His son Padaiyappa(Rajnikanth) is a mechanic in the city. On a trip to his village to visit his family, he runs into Nilambari (Ramya Krishnan), a rich, spoilt girl who is used to getting what she wants and now wants him. But he has his eyes on Vasundhara (Soundarya), the servant maid in Nilambari's house.

Padaiyappa's father, when asked by his brother (Manivannan) to partition his belongings, gives it all to him and decides to spend the rest of his life in a small area of land. But he dies soon after and its upto Padaiyappa to move into the barren land, find granite, grow rich, foil Nilambhari's plans to split him and Vasundhara, wed Vasundhara and grow old.

Nilambhari, after shutting herself up in a room for 18 years, sees her chance for revenge and gets her brother's(Nasser) son(Abbas) to love and then dump Padaiyappa's daughter(Preeta). Padaiyappa sets things right after the traditional big climax.

A role(taming of a shrew) that Rajni could have played with relish turns out to be rather tame and the blame lies squarely with K.S.Ravikumar. Sure it has the traditional Rajni style (there's two here - a salute with a flip and a finger-swish for "En vazhi thani vazhi") and a number of claps-inducing one-liners but the movie plays more like a collage of several of Rajni's recent outings. He faces off against a woman in a competition at a wedding (like 'Arunachalam'), agrees to wed someone other than the girl he loves just because his mother tells him to (like 'Mannan'), works hard and grows rich during a song (like 'Annamalai'), walks around with a beard and sunglasses and a bunch of people behind him (like 'Baasha') and has a daughter who falls in love with a boy from the enemy's side(like 'Annamalai'). But he still manages to inject freshness into the role and shines. There are a lot of pot-shots at 'Amma', a clever sequence of dialogs about his entry into politics and good-looking costumes. We are left to dream about what the movie would have been with Suresh Krissna(director of 'Annamalai', 'Baasha' and 'Veera') at the helm.

Ramya has a meaty role and uses the oppurtunity well. Soundarya has a good chance of winning the 'heroine with the least to do' award in Rajni movie history. Of the huge cast, Sivaji is wasted in a miniscule role, Nasser, Manivannan, Radharavi, Lakshmi Sitara and Senthil are adequate while Mansur Ali Khan and Prakash Raj have unnecessary cameos. A.R.Rehman has struggled to compose songs suited to Rajni but the song sequences have been picturised well with the pleasantly choreographed 'Suthi Suthi...' being tops.