Kunal Kemmu’s 'Vibe' Is No 'Madgaon Express' But Still Delivers A Good Time

Kunal Kemmu in a still from Vibe.

(Photo Coutesy: YouTube)

Kunal Kemmu’s Vibe gets a laugh out of you before a single frame of the film flickers to life.

The customary opening stretch of production company logos and streaming partners and marketing partners, and so on, is accompanied by playful voiceover commentary from the film’s lead character, poking fun at what all the logos and titles mean and why every film must open with long stretches of them.

Vibe is Kemmu’s second film as director after the clutter-breaking Madgaon Express, which remains one of the rare worthwhile (and consistently hilarious) comedies to emerge from Hindi cinema in the last few years.

At a time when the comedy genre itself has become little more than a lazy punchline of minimal effort and squeaky sound effects in the name of “slapstick” (Housefull 5, Bhooth Bangla, Hai Jawani Toh Ishq Hona Hai, Dhamaal 4), Madgaon Express was a much-needed reminder of the sheer effort, craft, writing and performances that go into cracking a laugh-a-minute comedy for the big screen.

Kemmu served as writer and director there, immediately establishing himself as one of the most exciting new filmmaking voices within mainstream Hindi cinema. With Vibe, he takes on two additional titles as both star and producer. The impact of wearing those multiple hats is certainly felt in the film’s unwieldiness and lack of restraint. But more on that later.

A Kunal Kemmu Showreel

As an actor, Kemmu continues to be an utter joy to watch, playing to the gallery (and to his strengths) here as lovable loser Hardik. And no one relishes the slacker everyman quite like him. The name is a hat tip to his character in Go Goa Gone (Raj and DK’s obvious influence continues to shine a tad too brightly in Kemmu’s films).

Hardik is a lazy underachiever coasting through life, mooching off his best friend Bhagirath AKA Bugs (an enjoyably vibrating Sparsh Shrivastava). Bugs gets Hardik a job at the same fancy software company he works for.

There, Hardik falls for intern Kareena (newcomer Vanshika Dhar). But the pair’s blossoming romance is punctured when chaos agents Hardik and Bugs find themselves randomly embroiled in a global terrorist cell, forcing a covert unit of the Indian government, led by a top official who goes by Madam H (Preity Zinta), to recruit them to go undercover and thwart the impending threat.

Preity Zinta in a still from Vibe.

(Photo Coutesy: YouTube)

It’s no surprise that Vibe is a Kunal Kemmu (the actor) showcase all the way. His Hardik is the best thing on offer here. Kemmu’s comedic hold over us is quite something, having honed his craft and played within this space so much that the smallest well-timed twitch on his face can elicit an instant chuckle or, at the very least, make you smile.

The obvious vanity trap you’d imagine a film like this would fall into is the actor-director shamelessly designing and bending a narrative entirely in service of himself and his character rather than the film. Except, curiously, Vibe falls into a different trap—Kunal Kemmu the producer falling to the whims of Kunal Kemmu the director. Vibe is a director showreel more than an acting one, with Kemmu soft-launching himself as a slick action filmmaker within a larger comedy narrative.

Except the two genres don’t quite coalesce and collide to their full potential here. The result is an overlong, uneven 2.5-hour action-comedy that only comes to life in fits and starts. While it delivers great moments, I seem to remember waiting for the next laugh more than the laughs themselves.

The Family Man-Coded

Vibe is unapologetically The Family Man-coded in its espionage packaging, spy apparatus and stakes. In an early scene, we even see one of Hardik’s colleagues watching the Prime Video show at work. Think The Family Man in a far more animated world, but instead of a middle-class James Bond protagonist, we get a bumbling, cowardly slacker tasked with saving the day.

The issue here is that very little of the film works outside of its comedy. Despite mounting a busy narrative of secret government agencies and a weirdly dense terrorism plot, you rarely feel the tension or the stakes, which would be fine in an entirely slapstick world, which this isn’t. Nor do you feel the central romance between Hardik and Kareena. Most surprisingly of all, you don’t particularly feel the most important ‘love story’: the brotherhood of Hardik and Bugs.

Kunal Kemmu and Sparsh Srivastava in a still from Vibe.

(Photo Coutesy: YouTube)

Unlike Madgaon Express, in which Kemmu gave us a surprisingly touching friendship story within the comedic chaos, here the bond between the friends doesn’t quite register.

As Bugs, Sparsh Shrivastava does his best to milk every moment and give him dimension, but you don’t entirely get a sense of who he is outside of Hardik. Elsewhere, Preity Zinta’s irritable scolding gets repetitive, but it’s her two generals, played by Yashpal Sharma and Lal Yadav—the two agents tasked with handling Bugs and Hardik—who are the real lost opportunity here.

The fact is, given it’s only the laughs that land, the long stretches of connective tissue between them risk feeling like narrative feet dragging, and the non-Hardik characters aren’t as endearing as you’d hope.

Action Vs Comedy

Vibe is also an oddly structured film. The indulgent, overlong duration makes sure of that. For one, in a lovable-idiots-in-an-outrageous-situation action comedy such as this, you’d think the plot would kick in quicker. But the first 30 minutes are spent merely establishing the two friends and seeing Hardik navigate corporate working life and his new crush.

It’s only post-interval that the two go full superspy. But it’s also here that comedy seems to take a back seat in favour of a generic action narrative. There’s a lengthy stretch of bad-guy monologuing where I quite literally lost the plot. Something about spy software and the economics of terrorism, and a character we’ve never met being killed by a different terrorist mastermind who’s assuming his identity using AI.

To Kemmu’s credit, while it does feel out of place, he does know how to construct some impressive action sequences. Whether it’s a long take early on which takes us through the terrorist camp or the slick final faceoff.

I wish Vibe was sharper, had more restraint and less throw-everything-at-the-wall energy. Still, it remains a film you want to root for. For Kemmu the director. For bringing craft back to comedies. For keeping laughs alive on the big screen.

Vibe releases in theatres on 18 September.

(Suchin Mehrotra is a critic and film journalist who covers Indian cinema for a range of publications. He's also the host of The Streaming Show podcast on his own YouTube channel. This is an opinion piece, and the views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for the same.)