Given Hindi cinema’s obsession with hypermasculinity and patriotism, I’m surprised it took so long for a spy comedy to emerge. Actually, I’m not so surprised; imagine offending 99 percent of the country by cajoling them into joking about national security. Humour is such a risk. Irreverence can be such a crime (ask our standup comics). But it’s only fitting that a Kunal — an affable, witty, unpretentious and naturally unserious observer of Indian living — leads the charge. After giving Dil Chahta Hai the dysfunctional-buddy treatment in Madgaon Express, Kunal Kemmu directs himself in Vibe, a slacker comedy that’s shamed into an identity crisis. It’s the cinematic equivalent of watching two gloriously apolitical dudes accidentally pass a joint at a smoky house party to a proud WhatApp uncle; nobody is prepared for the night (and fight) that follows.
The premise is just as well. Kemmu takes forward the all-vibes persona of Hardik, the clueless stoner from Go Goa Gone who stumbled into Madgaon Express. Here Hardik gatecrashes, by invite, the life of his best friend Bagirath (Sparsh Shrivastava), a Mumbai-based software genius who offers a fresh-from-rehab Hardik a new beginning. ‘Bugs’ worships the existence of Hardik, who in turn makes it seem like he’s doing Bugs a favour by receiving his help; he’s the sort of dead-weight friend with a crowd-pleasing personality that socially anxious introverts (like myself) love being around. Hardik accepts a marketing job in the same company, but his lust for new intern Kareena (Vanshika Dhar) gets them into trouble — just not in the way you’d think. The buddies soon find themselves in the crosshairs of big-picture stakes; mysterious intelligence boss Madam H (Preity Zinta) is forced to rope them into a mission to protect the nation from a Middle-Eastern terrorist threat. In short, the future of India depends on the two worst possible candidates.
For the first 90 of its 146 minutes, Vibe is comedy gold. Kemmu trusts himself to bring it, and he does. The initiation of Hardik and Bugs into a genre they want no part of finds the sweet spot between spoofy and slapstick. As a viewer, you’re either laughing or laughing in anticipation of laughing. It works on two levels. The first is just the language of situational humour; it’s not all gags and punchlines. The few — like a cheap Bangkok innuendo from the trailer — instantly feel out of place. (In the spirit of puns, does reviewing Vibe make me a vibe-rater?) But Kemmu’s penchant for physicality and timing are such that the possibilities are endless; he manages to create something out of nothing as both actor and director. There’s a refreshing unpredictability about his presence: panicked reaction shots, throwaway gestures, real-world versions of filmy tropes, self-deprecating pauses and physical meltdowns.
Anything can happen at any point, so you become hyper-aware of the sequences; even the waiting is written into the experience. You can tell that characters like Hardik have based their entire impression on the pop culture they’ve consumed — but life keeps puncturing that bubble. For instance, Hardik plans a La La Land-like date night for Kareena at a planetarium, but they have to break in awkwardly because she’s in a short dress. The second he dreamily asks her “do you trust me?” her primal response is “No,” so he then ends up begging her to trust him. It’s the sort of heightened love-story moment that’s brutally grounded by reality.
Speaking of brutal reality, it’s hard not to be endeared by two male friends who defy every norm of on-screen masculinity and heroism: weeping, begging for mercy, groaning, pretending, praying, clawing, confessing. They are shamelessly scared and make no effort to hide it. Each frame is alive to the inherent humour of being ordinary in an age of performative emotions. They’re not cowards or “losers” (though that’s how we’re programmed to see them), just average guys in self-preservation mode. It’s like watching two egg-display-picture Twitter handles minding their own business, only to be pushed into a blue-tick war of aura-farming and rage-baiting.
The incompetence of Hardik draws out the most amusing pieces — being ‘wired’ up against his wishes, an interrogation that exasperates his interrogators, ball-roasting tasers to keep him on script, and a training montage where his nerves alone break a lie-detector (and the system in general). It’s not original in terms of a global genre (think Austin Powers, Johnny English or Get Smart), but the Indian context is what does the trick. While Western spy comedies stem from the lampooning of James Bond, Vibe lampoons the audience seduced by the slick fictions they swear by. It’s funny that Hardik and Bugs are essentially playing the fans of all the films that sell us courage concealed by the colours of the flag.
Sparsh Shrivastava plays the perfect foil as the studious bestie; he’s the first to “feel the josh” before realising that perhaps he’d rather be a computer nerd named Josh. It’s a nice change to see Preity Zinta return as the butt-kicking avatar of MI6 boss M, but she’s the only performer who looks too tuned into the memo. Whenever Madam H delivers a chest-beating monologue or verbally inspires the two “donkeys,” you can see through the skit-like deception. She often seems like she’s stifling chuckles while putting on an intense front.
There’s another Kemmu-ism that’s easy to overlook in a whacky format. He has a blast with drugs-are-injurious-to-health gags, but not without a social edge: the intoxication of ‘substances’ becomes a metaphor for the Kool Aid consumed by citizens who get weaponised by the very escapism they once found refuge in. The cocaine that the meekest member of the Madgaon Express trio falls in is no different from the powdered cinema we seek out for recreational purposes. He transforms into a reckless, macho and fearless alpha under the influence, as if to suggest that the only way to become these men is by being addicted to chemical (or liquid) courage. Similarly, a serum called Sipahi-1 (Soldier-1) is a last-ditch mutation device for Hardik in Vibe. It takes no less than this toxic drug cocktail to make him the supersoldier that Bollywood has conditioned us to watch; I like that this manufactured hero isn't allowed to have the final word. The recent YRF spy flick Alpha employed a serum to similar effect, though it was eventually too insecure to commit to its subversions.
Which brings me to the anticlimactic flaw of Vibe. At some point, the film reaches Thailand, and turns into the precise breed of plotty action thrillers (terrorism, meet capitalism) that it seemed to be skewering. Things escalate quickly; the pockets of giggles are torn. It's frustrating to see the movie discover its vanity, but the reasons are obvious. First, it aspires to be a big-screen popcorn entertainer in the vein of Main Hoon Na and Om Shanti Om, where the focus is on giving the audience multiple genres at the price of one: comedy, song-and-dance romance, melodrama, action, scale, plot twists, spectacle. Vibe doesn't succeed at this because the switch is abrupt. More importantly, the comedy is so good as a baseline tone that you're disappointed when it changes gears. The ‘waiting’ and unpredictability that were strengths in the first half become a weakness in the second half.
Secondly, Vibe looks uncertain of going the whole hog in the faux-nationalism bits. It tempers its audacity, lest it goes too far. You can hardly blame it for being cautious, but it's strange when the promise dissipates into a series of poker-faced detours. At times, you can't even tell if a scene is sincere or goofy; you keep searching for a release, but the film refuses to mine the ‘sensitive’ portions beyond a Hardik cartoon expression. And lastly, Kemmu goes into showreel mode as a talented director who wants to try new things: runway chases, single-screen combat, slowmo intros. Unfortunately, his ambition — as a storyteller throwing it all against a wall to see what sticks; as a producer lending himself the stage of a star — rails against the core identity of the movie.
Could Vibe have trusted its primary vibe? Perhaps. Should it have stayed frivolous and local instead of spiralling into something more generic and expansive? Probably. Ironically, like Hardik himself, the film is most entertaining when it’s chilling without any motive. But it’s also the kind of film that’s so effective when it’s funny — especially in this age of Bollywood comic famine — that any other zone feels like a compromise. The lows feel lower because the highs are so dizzying. As a result, I wouldn’t call the stylish action parts a deal-breaker. It’s been long since a movie like this went all in, without getting conscious of the consequences. This one comes close, particularly because it remains a character-centric and adventures-of template.
It’s difficult to be too upset. Even when Vibe descends into wish-fulfillment and bucket-list-filmmaking mode, it stays in service of the two silly underdogs who are dragged into a space of soul-killing sobriety. If you’re determined to like them, you might justify the sudden gravity as a spell they’re under before snapping out of it and defeating the formula. In a way, they’re almost fighting a movie that’s trying to co-opt them. After all, everyone forgets the heated debate with the WhatsApp uncle at the party, but they will always remember those two cute potheads who spent the night making fun of themselves.