Anupama Parameswaran, Anveshi Jain, Ashwath Marimuthu, comedy, Dragon, Fatman Ravinder, Gautham Vasudev Menon, George Maryan, Gopika Ramesh, Harshath Khan, India, Indumathy Manikandan, K. S. Ravikumar, Kayadu Lohar, movies, Pradeep Ranganathan, reviews, VJ Siddhu
February 28, 2025
by Carla Hay
Directed by Ashwath Marimuthu
Tamil with subtitles
Culture Representation: Taking place in India from 2014 to 2024, the comedy film “Dragon” features an all-Asian cast of characters representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.
Culture Clash: A man goes from being a college dropout to a con artist who buys a fake college degree so he can get a high-paying computer technology job, but his lies end up catching up to him.
Culture Audience: “Dragon” will appeal mainly to people who are interested in watching a high-energy comedy that takes a few unpredictable turns.
“Dragon” starts off looking like a slapstick comedy that’s too absurd for its own good. However, this movie about a rebellious con artist gets better as it goes along, and it ends in a surprisingly meaningful way. The performances elevate the story. The movie’s biggest drawback is that it’s a little too long (157 minutes), but there are enough twists and turns in the plot to almost justify this lengthy run time.
Written and directed by Ashwath Marimuthu, “Dragon” takes place in India, from the years 2014 to 2024. The movie begins by showing Dhanapal Ragavan (played by Pradeep Ranganathan), who is a student at ASG Engineering College in Vellore, India. Dhanapal has a crush on another student named Anjana (played by Gopika Ramesh), even though Dhanapal already has a steady girlfriend named Keerthi Deepak (played by Anupama Parameswaran), who is also a student at the school.
One day, Anjana tells Dhanapal that she is attracted to “bad boys.” And then, quicker than you can say “dishonest chameleon,” Dhanapal becomes a troublemaker at school. He leads a group of other student hooligans, including his best friend Anbu (played by VJ Siddhu), for several misdeeds, such as starting physical fights and committing vandalism. Dhanapal gives himself the nickname Dragon when he decides he’s going to have a “bad boy” reputation.
Dhanapal gets punished by school officials but he is such an academically gifted student, he’s been able to avoid getting expelled. But one day, Dhanapal takes things to far. He throws a bottle, which happens to break the car window of the school’s dean Mayilvahanan (played by Mysskin), who is in the car at the time of this vandalism.
An enraged Mayilvahanan suspends Dhanapal, but other students beg Mayilvahanan to give Dhanapal another chance. Mayilvahanan agrees on one condition: Dhanapal must attend all of Mayilvahanan’s for the next three months. Dhanapal rejects this offer and drops out of school in a huff.
Dhanapal is still living with his loving and supportive parents—father Dhanapal Sr. (played by George Maryan) and mother Chitra (played by Indumathy Manikandan)—who have no idea that Dhanapal has dropped out of college. His parents are financially struggling, partially because they took out a loan to pay for Dhanapal’s education. Dhanapal pretends that he graduated from college. He lies to parents by telling them he’s gotten a fairly well-paying engineering job at an information technology company.
In reality, Dhanapal has been extorting his law-breaking pals to give him money, which Dhanapal pretends to his parents is his “salary.” Dhanapal gives his parents some of the money to help pay for the parents’ expenses, but he come up with phony excuses for why he needs to keep most of the money for himself. When Dhanapal pretends to go to work, he’s actually hanging out with his partier friends and getting drunk. Dhanapal’s rejects Anbu’s suggestion to become a rideshare driver because Dhanapal says that type of job doesn’t pay enough.
Dhanapal doesn’t feel much guilt about leading a double life and all the deceit that he perpetuates. In fact, he makes his parents feel guilty and sometimes yells at them if they ask him for money to help with their expenses. His mother gets a little suspicious from time time, but his father completely trusts and believes everything that Dhanapal says. Whenever, Chitra asks Dhanapal questions that could expose the truth, Dhanapal Sr. will scolds his wife by telling her she’s being too paranoid.
Dhanapal is a dishonest jerk, but he hasn’t been able to foool everyone. Keerthi knows that he’s an unemployed loser. And when Keerthi’s parents arrange for her to marry a math professor at Delhi University, she breaks up with Dhanapal during a tension-filled dinner at a restaurant. Dhanapal had wanted to marry Keerthi, so he’s angry and heartbroken.
Dhanapal reminds Keerthi that she proposed marriage to Dhanapal, so he doesn’t understand why she’s now rejecting him. Keerth bluntly says, “You can be a good lover, but not the right life partner.” Keerthi and Dhanapal have a shouting argument in the restaurant when he does something despicable during the argument: He puts his hands around her neck, as if he’s going to choke her. But then he stops before things go too far.
Dhanapal spends the next several weeks in a drunken stupor. One day, he’s driving a moped while drunk and gets into a accident where he falls down on the moped and injures himself. At the hospital where he gets medical treatment for his injuries, he tells the doctor that he hasn’t been sleeping well because he feeling sad over a recent breakup. The doctor tells Dhanapal to focus on being successful.
One evening, Dhanapal gets invited to a party at the upscale house of his friend Gowtham (played by Ashwath Marimuthu) and his wife Sherin (played by Anveshi Jain), who seem to enjoying an upper-middle-class lifestyle because of Gowtham’s job as an engineer. Dhanapal is slightly envious and asks Gowtham how he’s been able to get the engineering job without a college degree. Gowtham confides in Dhanapal that he paid for a fake college degree and gives him the name and contact information of the place where Dhanapal could get the same thing done for him.
This advice sets Dhanapal on a path of more deception. Dhanapal meets with the sleazy operator Rajesh M.S. (played by Fatman Ravinder) who sells these phony college degrees. It’s enough to say that Dhanapal’s life ends up changing in different ways. He decides that he no longer wants to be an engineer and wants to focus on computer programming instead.
Dhanapal gets a job at a computer software company called Lateral View, where he reports to a vice president named as Vale “Vel” Kumar (played by Gautham Vasudev Menon), who was the same person who interviewed Dhanapal. Dhanapal does very well at Lateral View. Because of Dhanapal’s financial success, he attracts many women, but he stays focused on his work, until he meets and falls for Pallavi Parasuram (played by Kayadu Lohar), the daughter of a wealthy businessman named Parasuram (played K. S. Ravikumar), who is eager to have Pallavi marry Dhanapal.
None of the above is really spoiler information, since a lot of these plot points are revealed in the movie’s trailer. There’s a lot more to the story, because Dhanapal still hasn’t completely gotten over the breakup from Keerthi. Something happens that causes a predictable love triangle. Furthermore, Dhanapal’s lie about his college education ends up coming back to haunt him.
Throughout “Dragon,” there are flashbacks and musical numbers, most of which didn’t really need to be in the movie. There are also scenes of Dean Mayilvahanan in an ASG Engineering College lecture hall, where he tells assembled students about Dragon and warns them not to make the same mistakes. This lecture takes on a new meaning by the end of the story.
“Dragon” is often very hyper and loud, but the comedic timing and acting talent of the cast members make ths movie mostly entertaining to watch. Ranganathan skillfully plays Dhanapal as someone who is easy to despise in the beginning of the film, but layers of Dhanapal’s personality gradually emerge and viewers might change their feelings about him during certain parts of the movie. Lohar is also quite good in the role of Pallavi, who has the unfortunate circumstance of falling in love with someone who’s still hung up on a previous love.
Even some of the most stereotypical things that happen in a comedy with a love triangle (such as pretending to one love interest to be somewhere else in order to be with the other love interest) is amusing in the movie. However, some of these antics come close to being repetitive and irritating when the jokes get a little over-used. There’s also a character named Vetri (played by Harshath Khan), who calls himself Kutty Dragon, who is intentionally annoying. “Dragon” is a flawed by watchable film that doesn’t sink into mediocrity, thanks to the last 20 minutes of the movie, which ends in an impactful way.
Phars Film released “Dragon” in select U.S. cinemas on February 21, 2025, the same date that the movie was released in India.