Slacker comedy meets espionage thriller in an awkward but passably entertaining union in Vibe, produced, written and directed by lead actor Kunal Kemmu.
The fun elements in the film vary wildly but they do not veer too far off the path the screenplay marks out for them. And that, for what it is worth, is no mean achievement.
High-spirited frivolity of the kind that Vibe peddles demands extreme caution. The danger of it falling through the cracks and sinking into brainless buffoonery is real and ever-present.
To its credit, even as it navigates differing strains of mirth that occasionally appear to work at cross-purposes, the film retains its grip on a wacky sense of verbal humour. For the most part anyway.
The action-comedy’s wobbly passages – it has more than its share – are neither overly glaring nor too damaging as they come and go looking to merge with the flow of a wild and whimsical narrative that flits from drollery to romance to action.
The essence of the inspired lunacy that propelled Madgaon Express, Kemmu’s maiden film as a director, is back in Vibe but only in the form of small driblets.
If his 2024 directorial debut, which did not feature Kemmu in the cast, was completely off-the-wall, his sophomore effort is only inconsistently so.
A handful of the gags and a substantial bunch of the one-liners and double entendres do what they are meant to do. They rest just exist without actually fizzling out.
Be that as it may, Kemmu the actor pulls off a rescue act as he traverses a gamut of moods from the gleeful to the ruffled and from the clueless to the petrified before he a pill developed in a top-secret intelligence agency lab kicks in.
Channeling the spirit of Hardik from the zany Go Goa Gone (the 2013 zombie comedy that he wrote the dialogues for), Kemmu puts his best foot forward.
He keeps the film on the boil even when the action sequences ill-advisedly and in contrived ways overshadow the uproariously absurd passages, which are clearly more up the writer-director’s street.
The male lead is ably supported by Sparsh Shrivastava, cast as the hero’s friend and roomie, a tech geek who has all the answers until matters spiral out of control and he finds himself in the eye of a storm.
Set in Mumbai in 2023, the plot hinges on a tried-and-tested pivot: two unsuspecting young men land in the wrong place at the wrong time and trigger mayhem. Following a planetarium date gone haywire, the duo is sucked into a high-risk gig.
They scramble to save their skins and lives as a shadowy national security agency orders them to help procure intel about an impending terrorist attack on Mumbai.
Hardik (Kemmu), who has relocated to Mumbai from Delhi and has only just come out of rehab, and his brainy but gawky best pal, Bugs (Sparsh Shrivastava), stumble upon a terror plot.
Out on a first date with Kareena (Vanshika Dhir), an intern in the tech firm where Bugs works and where he has secured a job for Hardik too. You, Hardik says to the girl, are the best thing ever to happen to me. He soon realises that he has spoken too soon.
After Hardik’s date ends messily, a mysterious Madam H (Preity Zinta in a never-before avatar) summons the two men and ropes them in for a dangerous mission that they are ill-equipped to handle.
Hardik and Bugs, who are clueless at the best of times, inevitably land in trouble at every step. They dodge unwanted attention, withstand slaps and punches and generally make a hash of things until one of them decides to take things in his hands.
The tone of the movie changes from this point on. The passably comic gives way to the awkwardly solemn. The shift is jarring to say the least.
Vibe starts off cheerfully enough as the two best friends engage in constant banter. They share a roof all right but they have little in common temperamentally.
A few romantic interludes are bunged in to accommodate a shaky love affair. Playing the love interest, newcomer Vanshika Dhir gives a good account of herself although she isn’t really the focal point of the film.
The Amazon MGM Studios and Drongo Films production finds its way back into some sort of rhythm in the moments leading up to a climax in which, as one would expect in a film such as this, all hell breaks loose. It does so in a way that helps Vibe return to its madcap moorings.
Apart from Sharmila Tagore in a cameo as the Union home minister, Vibe is noteworthy for the things that it makes Preity Zinta do.
Seen in a sedate avatar in last month’s period drama Batwara 1947, the actress pulls out the stops and delivers a part earnest, part tongue-in-cheek performance as a secret service agent and action queen, a merry cross between Lara Croft and Atomic Blonde.
Vibe is Kemmu’s film all the way, but it belongs more to the actor than the director. His performance packs all the madness that the role demands.
Sparsh Shrivastava, playing the relatively quieter of the two roles, gets the pitch of the character just right. He is neither too obtrusive nor too withdrawn.
Vibe isn’t deliriously funny, certainly not in the way that Madgaon Express was. But it has just enough steam to keep rolling without letting the missteps get in the way of the vibes that it wants to transmit.
