Kabadi Kabadi (2001 film)

Hero Pandiarajan comes to Chennai to work as an assistant manager in the Velvet shampoo company. In the bus he meets R Sundarrajan. Sundarrajan tricks Pandiarajan into staying awake for the entire duration of the bus's overnight travel time whereas Sundarrajan peacefully sleeps. Sundarrajan irritates him even more by saying the next time Pandiarajan takes a bus ride he should inform Sundarrajan, so that Sundarrajan can again use Pandiarajan as an unpaid guard for his belongings. Pandiarajan joins the company and to his surprise he finds Sundarrajan to be one of the Watchmen at the company. Pandiarajan takes revenge by assigning Sundarrajan to night duty for three winter months.

Pandiarajan then finds a rental house. He reduces the rent to a very low amount by convincing the house owner by telling him that he would help out in menial household tasks and work for free for a few hours in the owner's cycle repair shop.

Pandiarajan also meets Sangeetha, the heroine, who lives in the house opposite to his. He promptly falls in love with her. He tries to get the local petty shop owner Manivannan to introduce him to Sangeetha. Manivannan calls Sangeetha to the shop and introduces Pandiarajan to her. Just before he shakes her hand, he sees an old man get into an accident with his scooter. A small kid falls in front of the scooter and falls down. Pandiarajan wanting to make a good first impression, slaps the old man. But the man turns out to be the Sangeetha's father. Sangeetha understandably gets very upset and scolds Pandiarajan.

The next day Pandiarajan explains to Manivannan how he couldn't have guessed how the guy who he hit could be the heroine's father. He reasons the man was so ugly looking like coal and the heroine was so beautiful looking like Bangalore tomatoes and there was no way the man could be her father. Unbeknownst to him the heroine is actually standing behind Pandiarajan when he says this. Now she gets very angry as he has questioned her Patrentage.

To add to Pandiarajan's woes further, his grandma arrives from the village and upon hearing Pandiarajan's love troubles decides to take matters in her own hand. Since her eyesight is not good, she misunderstands the heroine's mother to be the heroine and asks the mother to marry Pandiarajan. This also irritates the heroine.

Another parallel thread is how a group of inept rowdies think Pandiarajan as a big shot and claims him to be their leader when Pandiarajan gets drunk and unwittingly beats up a big local rowdy. His association with these rowdies also irritates the heroine.

Because Pandiarajan couldn't make a direct good impression on her, he tries to help her anonymously. Everytime she faces a monetary problem Pandiarajan takes money from his savings and spends it for her. He even spends his savings for his grandma's eye surgery on the heroine's needs such as her College fees.

Now enters Karan. Since Pandiarajan pays very less amount as rent, the house owner forces Pandiarajan to take upon Karan as roommate. Karan is a fraud. He steals Pandiarajan's certificates and secures a job. He also sees Sangeetha and tries to woo her. He impresses Sangeetha and her parents too. Whatever bad Karan does, it falls on Pandiarajan, bringing his respect and name even more down with the heroine. Whatever good Pandiarajan does, it seems like Sangeetha misunderstands it and thinks the good is done by Karan.

R Sundarrajan actually turns out to be Sangeetha's uncle. Sundarrajan comes to know that Pandiarajan is in love with Sangeetha. He makes Pandiarajan make him the day shift Watchman again. He also uses Pandiarajan to get money, eat at high class restaurants and other benefits. Pandiarajan begrudgingly allows all this so that Sundarrajan could get Sangeetha fall in love with him. But these efforts also fail.

When Pandiarajan almost gives up on his love, luck comes in the form of the comedic rowdy gang who adopted Pandiarajan as their leader. They want to show some gratitude as Pandiarajan beating up the old big don has boosted the revenues for these small time rowdies. But they also mistakenly think Pandiarajan loves Sangeetha's mother and so they kidnap her. Pandiarajan mentions that he actually loves the daughter. The rowdies again kidnap Sangeetha. Upon hearing this, all the people in Pandiarajan's housing colony tries to rescue the two women from the clutches of the inept rowdies in their customary rundown factory which they use for kidnapping and other illegal activities. Karan uses this confusion to try to marry Sangeetha but she refuses and opens up the truth. She actually loved Pandiarajan all along and she knew all the good things were done by him. She also knew Karan was undeservingly taking the credit due for Pandiarajan. She wanted Pandiarajan to come out of his shyness, insecurities and confidence issues to propose to her. For that reason she irritated Pandiarajan by her friendship with Karan. She basically had used Karan to get Pandiarajan out of his shell. Karan, obviously as a villain, tries to force her into marrying him. Pandiarajan, upon hearing the heroine's admission of love, gets confidence and beats up Karan and saves Sangeetha. Pandiarajan and Sangeetha then happily marry.

• Pandiarajan as Pandian
• Sangeetha as Mythili
• Karan as Sivaprakash
• Manivannan
• R. Sundarrajan
• Venniradai Moorthy
• K. Rajan

The film was announced in mid-1997 by Pandiarajan, who revealed that the film would be written by K. Bhagyaraj and be produced by Poornima Bhagyaraj.[1] The film was delayed owing the financial problems for the producers.[2]

Music composed by Deva

A critic from The Hindu wrote "Comedy is the main line in Saranya Cine Creations's Kabadi Kabadi and all the scenes are made in a lighter vein. But at times one needs a little more of drama and sentimental scenes to move the film to a higher plane".[3] Balaji Balasubramaniam of BBthots.com suggested that "the entire movie consists of the single plot device of Pandiarajan's acts being misinterpreted by Rasika and that gets tiring soon enough" and that "unfortunately, the comedy does nothing to elevate the movie either".[4]