When Incompetence Becomes Comic Heroism: Arnab Banerjee reviews Vibe, Kunal Kemmu’s action-comedy spy thriller starring Sparsh Srivastava, Preity Zinta and Vanshika Dhir, exploring unlikely heroes, friendship, espionage, humour, chemistry, tonal balance, comic heroism, and contemporary Hindi cinema.

Writer/Director: Kunal Kemmu

Cast: Kunal Kemmu, Sparsh Srivastava, Vanshika Dhir, Preity Zinta, Yashpal Sharma, Dinesh Lal Yadav, Mark Bennington, Salem Kali

Cinematography: Kaushal Shah

Rating: ★★★

A film may possess an ingenious premise, an assured director and a cast brimming with talent, yet still lack the one intangible quality that can make or break a genre exercise: the right vibe. Not vibe in its loose, fashionable sense, but the precise tonal alchemy of mood, rhythm, atmosphere and attitude that tells us how seriously—or how gleefully—we are expected to take what unfolds on screen. For an action-comedy, that equilibrium is particularly precarious. Too much solemnity makes the jokes feel intrusive; too much frivolity diminishes the stakes. Vibe, for the most part, negotiates this tonal tightrope with considerable assurance.

A Spy Thriller With Comic DNA

Kunal Kemmu’s second outing as writer-director after 2024’s Madgaon Express, Vibe marks another significant turn in a career spanning more than three decades as an actor. It also adds producer to his expanding repertoire. His chosen vehicle is an action-comedy built on the architecture of a spy thriller but infused with the irreverent spirit of a buddy film. Terrorists, intelligence operatives, covert missions and threats to national security populate its world, yet its emotional centre rests on two thoroughly unlikely heroes who appear singularly ill-equipped to save anyone, let alone an entire nation.

Friendship Drives The Comedy

Hardik (Kunal Kemmu) and Bugs (Sparsh Srivastava) are opposites bound by friendship. Hardik is a shambling, irresponsible slacker whose life appears to be proceeding without either direction or urgency. Bugs is his antithesis: earnest, methodical and almost painfully committed to doing things by the book. Where Hardik improvises, Bugs follows procedure; where one cheerfully stumbles into trouble, the other desperately attempts to impose order upon the ensuing chaos. The premise may be familiar, but the film recognises that comedy often springs less from punchlines than from watching incompatible personalities repeatedly collide.

Hardik’s romantic life provides the first spark for the larger adventure. He falls for Kareena (Vanshika Dhir), an intern at his workplace, and becomes sufficiently smitten to overlook the possibility that she is concealing more than she reveals. Hardik is hardly fashioned as conventional romantic-hero material. Shameless, occasionally juvenile and perfectly comfortable being the butt of the joke, he possesses an appealing disregard for dignity. The screenplay even indulges in a few predictable gags around his name and male anatomy. Yet beneath his seemingly vacant exterior lies an unexpected gift: Hardik possesses an extraordinary ability to decode complex computer formulae.

That talent assumes far greater significance when his inconsequential existence collides with a dangerous conspiracy. Having returned from rehabilitation following a doping-related episode, Hardik is hardly looking for another upheaval. His attraction to Kareena, however, inadvertently draws him into a labyrinth of intrigue. What initially resembles an awkward workplace romance gradually reveals itself to be connected to something considerably more sinister.

Espionage Meets Farce

At the centre of this web is Madam H (Preity Zinta), an enigmatic spy chief compelled to recruit the least obvious candidate for a covert mission. A mysterious terrorist operation, ‘Operation Benaqab’, threatens national security, and Hardik’s peculiar technological gift suddenly makes him indispensable. The irony is central to the film’s comic engine: the man least suited to espionage becomes an unlikely asset to an intelligence operation of potentially catastrophic consequence. Bugs, inevitably, is pulled into the mess.

The ensuing mission becomes an exercise in counter-terrorism, damage control and sheer improvisation. Hardik and Bugs must navigate a conspiracy they barely understand while attempting to decipher the true purpose of Operation Benaqab. Meanwhile, Kareena’s identity becomes increasingly questionable, placing both her and Hardik in the crosshairs of a terrorist organisation. Romance, espionage and farce consequently begin to collide, with the personal and geopolitical increasingly becoming indistinguishable.

This is where Vibe earns its title. Its strength does not lie in reinventing either the spy thriller or the unlikely-hero comedy; rather, it lies in the tonal register through which it approaches familiar material.

Performances That Find The Vibe

The film understands that its humour works best when it grows organically out of character and circumstance rather than being mechanically attached to the thriller framework. Its most effective moments arise from the collision between the gravity of the threat and the sheer absurdity of those attempting to confront it.

Kemmu’s principal strength as director is his instinct for performance rhythm. He allows his actors to inhabit a heightened, slightly unhinged comic space without completely shattering the film’s internal logic. As Hardik, he plays foolishness without over-explaining it, allowing moments of unexpected competence to acquire their own comic force.

Sparsh Srivastava makes an effective foil. His Bugs is intensely earnest, and that seriousness becomes increasingly amusing beside Kemmu’s irreverence. Their contrasting temperaments provide the film with its most dependable source of humour.

Preity Zinta’s Madam H supplies the necessary gravitas, anchoring the eccentric proceedings within the recognisable world of espionage. Vanshika Dhir’s Kareena, meanwhile, occupies the intriguing territory between romantic interest and potential danger, lending the emotional thread an additional layer of mystery.

The Final Take

The screenplay steadily escalates the consequences: an apparently inconsequential man falls for an apparently ordinary woman; the romance leads him into a conspiracy; his hidden technological ability makes him valuable to intelligence operatives; and before long, he and his more responsible friend find themselves entangled in a mission involving terrorism and national security. The progression is deliberately improbable, but Vibe understands that improbability is precisely where its comedy resides.

When Kemmu’s writing, direction and performances click, Vibe transforms incompetence into comic heroism, finding its greatest strength in the chemistry between two unlikely saviours. It may not reinvent the genre, but it understands something equally important: sometimes a film does not need a new formula—it simply needs to get the vibe right.  

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