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'Loveyapa' Movie Review: Junaid Khan, Khushi Kapoor's Rom-Com is More Flat Than Fun
Advait Chandan's 'Loveyapa' tries. But to not punch higher with the material seems a disservice to what the film could have been; this is the equivalent of exchanging your phone with your lover—but after wiping it clean.
Director: Advait Chandan
Writers: Sneha Desai
Cast: Khushi Kapoor, Junaid Khan, Grusha Kapoor, Ashutosh Rana, Tanvika Parlikar
Language: Hindi
Can you still love your partner once you discover what they hide on their phone? Filmmaker Advait Chandan explores what it means to trust, falter, grow up, and introspect in his latest young romance Loveyapa; it's the digital coming-of-age where phones are exchanged, hearts are broken, and lessons are learnt. There are conflicts, but is there heft?
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Loveyapa is a near-faithful remake of Pradeep Ranganathan's charming Tamil film, the blockbuster Love Today (2022). The Hindi adaptation features Junaid Khan (Gaurav) and Khushi Kapoor (Baani), leading the story of a couple who must swap their phones for 24 hours if they want to get married.
The film is anchored in a solid modern-day conflict as it follows young lovers battling adult issues. The stakes are neatly raised— Is your current partner talking to their ex? Are long drives with a former lover problematic? To what extent would you go to find a portable charger?— even though almost all of them follow the beats of Love Today without any novelty.
But the strengths of Loveyapa are also its weaknesses. Chandan, who has previously excelled in staging emotional scenes to sweeping effects in the tearjerker Secret Superstar (2017) and the under-loved Laal Singh Chaddha (2022), keeps his third outing featherlight by design but also to a fault.
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This is especially puzzling when one has seen the original, which—no spoilers here—used humour as a trampoline to land on all the heavy-duty moments. Love Today knew exactly where it wanted to go, so it smartly built everything up through its hilarious sequence of scenes; director and lead star Ranganathan, especially in the second half, smartly fooled the audience into believing that the punchline was the joke—while it was the emotional syapa (mess) that was to come.
Here, Chandan and Sneha Desai (screenplay and dialogues) make some tweaks as they transform the more rooted story of Love Today into the bigger, more happening world of Loveyapa. For instance, the controlled strictness of actor Sathyaraj's home from the original Tamil film isn't quite replicated here in the less-suffocating household of Ashutosh Rana (playing Kapoor's father), even though some of the film's best moments feature him and the young lovers. However, Desai's dialogues are mostly delightful even though they later lean towards being more message-coded.
Chandan has handpicked a commendable cast that keeps everything afloat when the film's leads don't always deliver; actors Kiku Sharda, Rana, Grusha Kapoor, Tanvika Parlikar each get a few scenes that they chew with relish and ensure Loveyapa isn't entirely displaced. Meanwhile, Khushi Kapoor is on a decent ground here as Baani. She sparkles like a rom-com actor in the making, complimenting the breeziness of the film even though she doesn't always get the emotional beats right. On the other hand, Junaid Khan's sincerity is endearing but the actor, who made his debut with the Netflix film Maharaj (2024), carries a strange air that he's above all of this.
It almost seems Khan, the person, doesn't believe in the syapa that's unfolding, but Khan, the actor, has to somehow play along. He shines in the quieter moments, but a film like Loveyapa needed more seamless abandon. Khan's inability to surrender to the naivety and street-smartness of a young Delhi boy takes you out of the film.
Loveyapa tries. But to not punch higher with the material seems a disservice to what the film could have been; this is the equivalent of exchanging your phone with your lover—but after wiping it clean.