Ravishankar, Kabali and Ramanathan are a trio of friends who happen to live in a small colony with their wives Suguna, Ranjitham and Malu. The men work in the same factory and their wives happen to share a good rapport among themselves.
The men are quite irresponsible and carefree by nature and spend heftily on alcohol and other less important means of entertainment and owing to this, their wives have an uphill task at their hands every month to make ends meet.
When the men lose their jobs owing to a tiff with their boss and their families having to face the brunt of the loan sharks, the women of the families resort to work in a garment factory to make ends meet. This hurts the ego of the men and their chauvinistic nature brings an all-out divide between themselves and their wives, who are morally right in this situation.
The rest of the story is about the events that take place in resolving the conflict and the chauvinistic men realising their flaws eventually.
D. S. Ramanujam of The Hindu wrote, "Keeping up with the Joneses is the crux of theme which has been tried in many earlier Tamil movies. The director being aware of it, focusses on the problem of vexed housewives turning office-goers, the plus and minus points of it and the role of unemployed husbands during such periods. All these common occurrences have been fabricated to an enjoyable level by the dialogue and screenplay of the director in this lengthy family drama of nearly three hours".[7]
