Kunal Kemmu’s Vibe arrives as a Hindi action comedy that tries to fuse buddy film energy, espionage farce, and workplace satire into one mainstream package. Written and directed by Kemmu, the film places him on screen alongside Sparsh Shrivastava, Preity Zinta, and Vanshika Dhir in a story built around two mismatched childhood friends who get pulled into a national security mess through a corporate software trail. Set largely in Mumbai and shaped around the idea of accidental heroism, the film uses the grammar of the spy spoof while leaning on the rhythm of a slacker comedy.
Vibe: Plot
Vibe follows two childhood friends in Mumbai whose sharply different temperaments become the engine of the film’s central chaos. Kunal Kemmu plays Hardik Sharma, an impulsive, unserious drifter who returns to India after a stay at a rehabilitation centre in London. Sparsh Shrivastava plays Bhagirath “Bugs” Bhargav, Hardik’s far more disciplined friend, a gifted software developer employed at Next Phase Technologies. Out of loyalty, Bugs convinces his workplace to hire Hardik into the marketing department, even though Hardik is plainly unsuited to the job and far more interested in pursuing office flirtation than professional responsibility.
That distraction takes the form of Kareena, played by Vanshika Dhir, a new intern who becomes the object of Hardik’s attention almost immediately. What begins as shallow workplace attraction soon opens into something more dangerous when Hardik discovers that Kareena is not the person she claimed to be. That revelation pulls both men into a larger national security threat, especially because the software connection at the heart of the conspiracy traces back to Bugs’ company. The storyline shifts from urban buddy comedy to conspiracy caper with considerable speed, asking the audience to accept that a frivolous romantic detour can suddenly trigger a full scale terror plot.
The film then moves decisively into spy comedy territory when the two friends are detained by an elite intelligence unit headed by Madam H, played by Preity Zinta. She is the stern operational force who recognises that Hardik and Bugs are already too entangled to walk away, so she recruits them into the mission rather than sidelining them. From there, the storyline follows these two spectacularly unprepared civilians as they are pushed into the role of accidental spies, trying to stop a terrorist conspiracy while stumbling through danger, panic, incompetence, and patriotic urgency in uneven proportions.
Vibe: Performance
Kunal Kemmu plays Hardik with obvious commitment, and there are moments when that commitment almost creates a stronger film around him than the material deserves. He understands the physicality of a man who mistakes recklessness for charm, and he gives Hardik the right kind of loose limbed restlessness. But the performance also exposes one of the film’s larger weaknesses. Hardik is written as chaotic and unserious to such an extent that he often stops being amusing and starts becoming dramatically exhausting. Kemmu keeps pushing for comic momentum, yet the character remains stuck in a narrow loop of swagger, foolishness, and delayed comprehension.
Sparsh Shrivastava fares better because Bugs is written with at least some recognisable internal structure. He is intelligent, loyal, sincere, and anxious in a way that gives the performance a workable emotional base. Shrivastava brings a convincing sense of decency to the role, and his reactions often do more comic work than the film’s louder punchlines. He is especially effective in scenes where Bugs has to balance patriotic seriousness with disbelief at Hardik’s idiocy. The actor manages to protect the character from becoming a mere straight man, which is no small achievement in a film that repeatedly leans on the same friendship dynamic.
Preity Zinta, cast as Madam H, brings presence and discipline to the screen. Her role is built around command, impatience, and institutional authority, and she plays it with firmness. Yet the film never fully develops Madam H beyond her functional position in the plot. She enters as the adult in the room, the one figure who can impose shape on the chaos, but the screenplay uses her more as a corrective device than as a fully textured character. Zinta gives the film some needed composure, even if the writing does not offer her enough variation.
Vanshika Dhir as Kareena has the difficult task of initiating the twist while also sustaining intrigue. She fits the surface demands of the role well enough, but the film treats Kareena more as a mechanism than a person. Once the reveal is activated, the screenplay seems less interested in her psychology than in the confusion she generates for the heroes. That limits what Dhir can do. Even so, she maintains a composed screen presence in a film that otherwise keeps slipping into frantic overstatement.
Vibe: Analysis
The most frustrating aspect of Vibe is that its storyline has the skeleton of a workable comic thriller. A slacker and a software engineer getting dragged into an intelligence operation is a setup with enough contrast, friction, and thematic possibility to sustain a sharp genre blend. The problem is that the film does not know how to graduate that premise from anecdotal fun to sustained narrative design. The plot keeps escalating, but escalation is not the same thing as development. The screenplay confuses movement with progression, so the story grows louder without becoming tighter.
As a director, Kunal Kemmu shows energy and genre enthusiasm, but the control visible in his better scenes deserts him too often here. He understands how to mount a comic chase, how to stage banter with speed, and how to visualise urban confusion. What he struggles with is tonal calibration. The film wants to be silly, slick, tense, and sentimental at the same time, and those impulses do not always coexist gracefully. A spy comedy can survive absurdity, but it still needs internal rhythm and narrative discipline. Vibe keeps lunging toward set pieces before it has earned them.
The screenplay is the weakest craft component because it refuses to sharpen the plot’s transitions. Hardik’s movement from unserious office intruder to accidental national security asset feels less like a carefully built arc and more like a switch that has simply been flipped. Bugs has clearer motivation, but even his journey is often reduced to functional reactions. The storyline depends on the contrast between these two men, yet the writing rarely deepens that contrast into something genuinely revealing about friendship, class aspiration, masculine irresponsibility, or patriotic performance. The themes are visible in outline but underexplored in execution.
The cinematography gives the film a reasonably polished commercial surface, especially in surveillance driven scenes and movement through corporate and intelligence spaces, but the images seldom carry extra dramatic meaning. Editing becomes a more serious issue because comic suspense depends on precision, and Vibe is frequently too loose in how it cuts from joke to threat to exposition. Instead of building cumulative momentum, many scenes feel chopped into functional beats. The music does its job in signalling mood, though it rarely lifts the material into a stronger tonal register. Overall, the craft remains competent at the level of packaging, but packaging cannot compensate for a plot that keeps mistaking noise for shape.
Vibe: Verdict
Vibe is not without effort, and that is what makes it more disappointing than disposable. There is visible intent behind the film’s attempt to merge a buddy comedy with a spy caper, and there are flashes where one can see the sharper version of this material trying to emerge. Sparsh Shrivastava gives the film steadiness, Preity Zinta lends authority, and Kunal Kemmu throws himself into the central role with conviction. But conviction alone cannot rescue a screenplay that keeps overplaying its hand.
The film’s biggest failure lies in how it handles its own storyline. What begins as a contrast driven character setup between Hardik and Bugs should have generated escalating comic tension rooted in personality, circumstance, and consequence. Instead, the plot keeps jumping ahead on convenience, and the humour becomes increasingly dependent on Hardik’s buffoonery rather than on clever situational writing. By the time the film reaches its more elaborate spy mechanics, it has already spent too long flattening its own characters into broad functions.
There is a version of Vibe that could have been sharp, eccentric, and knowingly ridiculous. The released film is more scattershot than satirical, more hectic than witty, and more pleased with its attitude than with its storytelling. It wants to sell coolness through surface rhythm and quirky confusion, but empty swagger is a fair description of what remains once the initial premise loses steam.
Vibe: Rating
Critics Rating: 2/5
Box Office Rating: 1/5
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