Seval

Plot

The beginning is promising, at any rate, as you watch a Don't-Care Murugesan (Bharath) limp sorrowfully from the Central Jail, Palayamkottai, in a scruffy beard and glasses.

He has been incarcerated for 17 years. Naturally, there's a story which rewinds from 1989. In those halcyon days, he's an unruly youngster in pretty village Sivasailam, (Hari's forte, Thirunelveli District), the son of a hard-working flower-sellers (Rajesh and Yuvasri), with Thapaal Thangavelu (Vadivelu), who provides as much laughter as the posts he delivers.

Life is a long, sunny adventure for Murugesan who beats people up, sells his grandfather's land, runs over rooftops (like the rooster of the title) and incurs so much of his father's wrath that he's prophesied to meet a horrible end. Not that this gloomy prospect affects Murugesan—he continues on his own sweet way until he runs smack into Parijatham (debutante Poonam Bajwa), a demure, fair-complexioned, striking Iyer girl, the daughter of Panjami Iyer (Y. G. Mahendran) and the younger sister of Gayatri (Simran).

Thus we have the first half which is a series of rollicking fun interspersed with logical sequences; the two have sudden and quirky escapades.

In the meantime, the village's bigwig Periyavar (Sampath Raj), who is magnanimous in public and a tyrant at home, casts his eyes on Parijatham. What sets his characterization apart is that he is not your average villain who shrieks and carries away the heroine; he places his pawns carefully, and is afraid of being found out and Parijatham is trapped and he starts removing her dresses. He and Murugesan come close to breaking each other's bones many times—but the situations defuse themselves in a perfectly natural fashion.

Several twists in the tale occur in a quick fashion, and Murugesan and Parijatham are bound in a net from which, seemingly, there is no escape.

Soundtrack

The songs were composed by G. V. Prakash.

Release

The satellite rights of the film were sold to Kalaignar.

Critical reception

Sify wrote "The film just drives you crazy, and story telling itself is confusing with a lot of plot holes. At times it is hard to tell what the film is about, though it is very predictable at every turn as Hari has taken certain scenes and situations from his earlier films!". Behindwoods wrote "Looking at Seval, one does not know whether Hari has tried to be different or is it the execution that went wrong. Clearly, this was made by a really ‘out of form’ Hari who generally delivers great results." Nowrunning wrote "Hari panders to the taste of his rural audience all the way, but the movie is bound to disappoint city-dwellers since neither the story nor its treatment appeal to anyone with an IQ quotient higher than the least educated village wastrel."