'Dude' Movie Review: Pradeep Ranganathan Shouts Through a Loud, Crass Soup Boy Comedy

There’s an argument to be made about the cleverness of the opening sequence of Pradeep Ranganathan’s third outing as hero, Dude. Not only does he deserve an introduction befitting a rising star, but he’s also not at the level where he can save an entire village — at least, not yet. So instead of a grand hero’s entry, what he gets is the absolute definition of a zero entry.

He’s lost, heartbroken, and upset when we first meet Agan (Pradeep) as he walks into his ex-girlfriend’s wedding. He hasn’t come to disrupt the ceremony, he simply demands to know why she left him for an NRI. Things quickly go from bad to worse when he literally pulls the thaali — the nuptial thread — right off her neck. A chase ensues, and the zero entry ends with Agan realising that a woman doesn’t owe a man an explanation for breaking up with him — it’s reason enough that she wants to.

This scene sets the tone for the rest of the film, which follows a familiar pattern. Each subplot begins by building laughter around something questionable, only for Agan to change his mind at the last minute and redeem himself with a moral lesson that’s just “woke” enough to pass.

When you extrapolate the symbolism of that opening, you understand what Dude is trying to do. Agan doesn’t just snatch the thaali off his ex-lover — he’s making a larger point about how this sacred thread means nothing compared to the feelings of the woman wearing it.

It’s a clever idea, and one that can only really exist in a film about a twisted love triangle involving a married couple and a child born out of wedlock. But what Dude does with this half-decent concept is so over the top that subtlety doesn’t stand a chance.

Dude remains unpredictable, but not for the right reasons. Take the film’s big interval twist — or rather, twists. Having just come out of Dragon, a movie elevated by its interval reveal, Pradeep delivers so many turns here that you feel like you’re watching a Tamil soap opera written by Jonathan Nolan.

It bends your mind in ways you don’t want it to, and the heightened emotions are so loud and crass that you feel like your Instagram algorithm is punishing you. And it’s not the silly kind of loud either — the film deals with heavy subjects like caste and honour killing, but from such a shallow, upper-caste perspective that Hridhu Haroon’s character is reduced to a helpless caricature in need of saving.

What’s more frustrating is how the film leans on tired tropes from Idhayaam and Vijay’s Kaavalan. True love may be about letting her go, but Agan’s romantic arc is written so conveniently that we never buy into his feelings or his sudden epiphanies.

It doesn’t help that Pradeep’s performances are beginning to feel repetitive. You sense him imitating himself — with traces of Dhanush and Rajinikanth — and apart from a few big laughs, his act feels grating in the serious moments. The same applies to Mamitha Baiju and Sarathkumar, whose characters are written with such coarseness that it’s hard to tell whether Dude is aiming for a dark comedy like Vignesh Shivan’s Paava Kadhaigal segment, or if it’s just a bad joke.

Even Sai Abhayankar, despite the hype, doesn’t do much beyond the wild opening sequence set to “Oorum Blood.” Sure, the film has its laugh-out-loud moments and tries to make a case for a hero who lets his lover live freely, outside of societal conditioning. He’s also a “hero” who’s willing to let her go, even if it breaks his own heart. But in this frenetically paced comedy, emotions come flying at us so rapidly that we end up feeling more sympathetic to ourselves than to the protagonist seeking our pity.

From the man who made Love Today, we get a love story that feels — quite literally — so yesterday.