'Idli Kadai' Movie Review: Simple, Obvious Pleasures in Dhanush’s Homebound Drama

It doesn’t take Dhanush more than five minutes to both frustrate and fascinate you with his filmmaking. In one scene, we see Murugan (Dhanush) on a video call with his fiancée Meera (Shalini Pandey) after returning to his village. Murugan is in Tamil Nadu and she’s in Bangkok; he is poor, and she is rich. But instead of using a line or a frame to underline this disparity, director Dhanush stages Meera outside her mansion, seated on the bonnet of a white Rolls Royce. The next time we see her, she FaceTimes Murugan with a champagne flute in hand, strutting around the deck of her yacht. And in a silly line, her wealthy father Vishnu Vardhan (Sathyaraj) explains to his spoiled son: “We millionaires don’t get to where we are in life just because of hard work and talent.”

These scenes are anything but subtle and display the instincts of a filmmaker who doesn’t trust his audience. And yet, just a scene later, we see Murugan seated at his doorway at dawn, looking outwards. We don’t see his face, but as his friend Kayal (Nithya Menen) walks past him into the house, the framing alone makes us feel the full weight of what Murugan is carrying. Without a word or a GV Prakash swell, Dhanush lands a moment that lingers. At times you feel you’re watching the work of a novice; minutes later, it feels like two different directors made Idli Kadai.

The same could be said of Dhanush the writer. On one hand, he gives you the most perfunctory villain in Ashwin (Arun Vijay), whose sole job is to dress like old money while huffing and puffing through town. He recalls the antagonist in Dhanush’s Velaiyilla Pattathari (VIP)—another spoiled heir destined to inherit his father’s business. If Dhanush mockingly called him “Amul Baby” in VIP, here Ashwin is just another nepo baby.

Ironically, Murugan too is a kind of nepo baby. However humble, he inherits his father’s idli kadai. But in one of the film’s sharper writing touches, Murugan struggles to inherit the same Midas touch that made his father’s idlis legendary. In this arc, the film carries echoes of Thevar Magan; like Sakthivel (Kamal Haasan), who once pitched the idea of bringing McDonald’s to India, Murugan initially tries to modernise his father’s legacy with technology and franchising.

In a tender tribute, Murugan gradually starts resembling his father, just so he can inherit his magic. It’s a lovely stretch of the film—he swaps business suits for white veshtis, stops shivering during cold morning showers, and gains the superhuman strength to grind idli batter for hours. When GV Prakash’s choral score swells, the film glows with a divine warmth, as though a hero has been born.

But minutes later, frustration returns when the bad guys re-enter. At one point, the film hints at a clever food metaphor: Murugan perfects his father’s idli recipe, while the villains are represented by parottas (Samuthirakani) and burgers (seen at Sathyaraj’s)—both symbols of unhealthy indulgence. Yet even this idea feels tossed in as an afterthought.

When Vishnu Vardhan and Ashwin shift to Murugan’s hometown, the freshness evaporates, replaced by the clichés of mainstream Tamil cinema. A shootout detour appears out of nowhere, pandering to the masses more than the story. And yet, Dhanush the writer still sneaks in affecting touches—like Parthiban’s return in a moment that will outlast the film itself.

In this tug of war between the wholesome and the generic, Idli Kadai leaves you with extremes on both ends. As the story of a small-town boy returning to his roots to inherit his father’s craft, it works more than well. But as a David-versus-Goliath tale, it remains too undercooked to be palatable.