Idhayam Murali Review: ★★★☆☆ (3/5)
Aakash Baskaran’s debut is packed with 90s nostalgia, heartfelt humour, and a scene-stealing Fahadh Faasil cameo, but the second half overstays its welcome. Atharvaa delivers a charming performance in this nostalgic Tamil romance. Atharvaa and the lovable supporting cast recreate the magic of first love, but an overstretched runtime keeps the film from soaring.
Rating: ★★★☆☆ (3/5)
Director: Aakash Baskaran
Release: July 10, 2026
Language: Tamil
Cast: Atharvaa, Preity Mukhundhan, Kayadu Lohar, Fahadh Faasil (cameo), Natarajan Subramaniam
Runtime: ~150 mins
There is a specific kind of Tamil cinema nostalgia that lives in the bones of anyone who grew up watching films from the 1990s. The railway station romance, the tuition class crush, the gang of friends who know your deepest secrets and use them to embarrass you at the worst possible moments. Idhayam Murali is built almost entirely from those memories, and for a good portion of its runtime, that is enough to keep you genuinely happy.
The story follows Idhaya, played by Atharvaa, a man who has spent his entire life unable to say the three words that matter most. We meet him on a flight to India, hours before his wedding, recounting the string of loves he never quite confessed.
The flashbacks take us through his childhood crush on a teacher, a college romance that ends in a twist he did not see coming, and a more serious relationship that blooms in adulthood. Every time the moment arrives to finally say how he feels, something stops him — nerves, bad timing, the particular paralysis that only the genuinely lovestruck seem to suffer from.
It is a premise with real emotional truth at its centre. Most people have been Idhaya at some point. The hesitation, the missed windows, the silent what-ifs that follow you around for years — these are feelings anyone who has ever liked someone more than they admitted can recognise immediately.
The first half is where Idhayam Murali does its best work. It is breezy and funny, moving through Idhaya’s youth with the warmth of someone genuinely fond of the era they are recreating. The comedy lands well, particularly from Parithabangal Sudhakar, whose expressions and timing produce the film’s biggest laughs. Manoj Paramahamsa’s cinematography is consistently gorgeous — Trichy, Madurai, and New York all look beautiful in a way that makes you want to visit each place immediately.
Fahadh Faasil’s cameo is the film’s single most talked-about element, and deservedly so. He plays a character who functions almost as the audience’s representative — someone who calls out the hero’s flaws and the script’s more convenient choices with deadpan precision. Every moment he is on screen the film becomes sharper and funnier, and when he says “I’m done” at a particularly stretched moment, the audience laughs because they know exactly how he feels.
Atharvaa carries the lead role with genuine vulnerability. His Idhaya is never unlikeable, even when his decisions test your patience — which is a harder achievement than it sounds for a character built entirely around indecision. Preity Mukhundhan brings freshness and energy to her role, and Kayadu Lohar, despite limited screen time, handles her emotional sequence post-interval with a quiet grace that leaves you wanting considerably more of her.
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The film’s central problem is a simple one — one note stretched across two and a half hours. Idhaya does not really change between the first scene and the last. The relationships that should anchor the emotional beats are consistently underexplored. Characters arrive when the story needs them and disappear when it does not, with little regard for whether their absence makes sense. The second half loses the momentum the first half built and never fully recovers it.
Idhayam Murali is a pleasant, warm, and frequently funny film that stops just short of being something genuinely moving. It is best enjoyed as a comfortable nostalgic outing rather than a coming-of-age story with something deep to say.
Worth watching for the first half, the comedy, and Fahadh’s cameo alone.
Idhayam Murali is now playing in cinemas.