This movie should have been retitled Anbe Sivam 2. Kamal Haasan is again on his personal mission, looking for love. In one scene, he says, “Anbe Venggadachalam” and someone corrects him, saying, “Anbe Sivam”. And Kamal concurs and says that he had already said that, so he is trying a new approach. And this movie is exactly that.

In pursuit of conveying both his wisdom and confusion, Kamal did not forsake elements of entertainment. This is a remake of the successful Hindi comedy, Munna Bhai MBBS. I have not seen the Hindi original, but I am very confident that Kamal will try to top it up.

Some of old Kamal gang are back in this movie. There is the older set, like Nagesh, Crazy Mohan (he penned the dialogue), Kaka Rathakrishnan and Kamal's childhood friend and sometimes director, Santhana Barathi (whose name Gangatharan becomes source of joke that we never thought of). The newer pairing will be Sneha as the heroine and Prakashraj as her father. And yes, you all know it, this film gets Kamal together with Prabhu, who of late have been descending into low-budget fares. The unfortunate thing is, Prabhu, who plays Kamal's sidekick, remains mostly in background. Too bad. Given proper script, he can be a brilliant comedian, not to mention that he had inherited his father's talent as a good character actor.

This film (and, I believe, Munna Bhai MBBS) picks up a bit of a plot from the Hollywood film Patch Adams. In that movie, Adams, played by Robbin Williams, applies humour to treat his patients, gets into trouble, and comes out of it fine. And the truth is, it is based on an actual person and incident.

Kamal plays Vasool Raja, basically a loan collector. He makes living beating others up, and sometimes, negotiating, to make his collection and take a cut from it. Prabhu is his sidekick, Vatti (literally interest). His father, played by ageing Nagesh, thinks that he is a doctor. He finds out, and Kamal goes out to prove that he can be a doctor after all.

A simple plot, but Kamal uses it to drive home the message of love. There is some parallel in this story to that of Anbe Sivam (also borrows a little from Hollywood movie). Both are men of the street, while Sivam leads a union, Raja leads a bunch of hoods, working more like Robin Hood and his merry men. The bad guy in Anbe Sivam, played by Nassar, is an industrialist who follows conventional belief in employer's iron fist ruling, while the bad guy here (not necessarily bad, since this is supposed to be an all out comedy), played by Prakash Raj, sticks to the no-attachment attitude taken by doctors, who are doing their job for job's sake. Both have daughters whom Kamal falls for emotionally. Nassar is brutal, while Prakash Raj takes a more careful measure in ensuring Kamal gets kicked out of the medical college (yes, he goes to college after all) and stay away from his daughter, Pappu (Sneha).

Along the way, Kamal inserts as much humanitarian message as possible. At the same time, he doesn't get too imposing ala Rajini or Vijayakanth. The most moving speech is given during a trial-like session climaxing the movie. In that he expresses his confusion on the methods applied by the doctors, their indifference to the sacred relationship they were supposed to have with their patience. Sometimes, I can't tell whether he is acting. It is so real that it will move you (which Kamal emotional performances didn’t). In fact, at early stage of his career, he lost a very close friend to cancer. Recently, his collaborator, composer Mahesh, also passed away because of cancer. Kamal and his fan club have been working hard for the past few years on helping cancer patience. So you are right if you feel that this film is an instrument for Kamal's personal crusade.

And it works well both as an entertainment, and something to think about after you have digested your popcorns. Like Anbe Sivam, I find myself agreeing to him most of the time.

On to the talents.

Everyone did his or her job well. Prakash Raj gets to steal the limelight like he usually does, and Kamal is an actor enough to allow him to do that. Prabhu, like I said before, is wasted here. He shines once in a while, but the script is not generous to him. Sneha, as usual, is selfless. Unless Simran, who, in her previous collaborations with Kamal comedies tend to overact stupidly thinking it is funny. Sneha injects gentle intelligence into her character. Her sense of humour is subtle, as she is not required to be hysteric here. Hopefully, she will bring back the glorious days of Tamil film actresses, when they had pure talent, not just body to die for.

Charan has done a workman like job, something that does not cry for attention. Commendable. Crazy Mohan has toned down the comedy, and has spared us from running to ground the jokes on mistaken identity, and misunderstood words (see Panchathanthiram for example). The music is fine, nothing to shout about. In short, nobody slips up in here. With Kamal on board, and some working for the first time with him, they better measure up.