Vibe (2026): Kunal Khemu’s Action-Comedy Runs on Fumes After a Razor-Sharp First Half

Kunal Khemu has spent the better part of two decades being the most reliably funny man in Hindi cinema without ever quite getting the credit for it. As a director, he arrived with Madgaon Express, a film that understood the precise alchemy of putting idiots in mortal danger and letting panic do the comedic heavy lifting. Vibe, his sophomore feature, opens with that same instinct operating at full voltage, and then, somewhere past the interval mark, the battery starts to die.

The premise is deceptively simple: two friends, Hardik (Khemu) and Bugs (Sparsh Shrivastava), are recruited by the enigmatic Madam H (Preity Zinta) to protect India from a terrorist threat they are spectacularly unqualified to handle. It’s the kind of setup that thrives on the gap between competence and circumstance, and for roughly seventy minutes, Khemu the director knows exactly how to exploit it.

The Recruitment Scene and the Art of Comic Mismatch

The film’s strongest sequence, the recruitment by Madam H, works because Khemu stages it as a comedy of bureaucratic absurdity rather than a spy-movie cliché. Zinta plays Madam H with a straight-faced gravity that never winks at the audience, which is precisely the right choice. The humour emerges from the collision between her clipped, mission-briefing cadence and Hardik’s visibly short-circuiting attention span. Khemu’s Hardik doesn’t deliver punchlines so much as reactions, a slack-jawed blink here, a delayed nod there, and the scene’s rhythm depends entirely on his ability to let silences sit just long enough to become funny. It’s a masterclass in the kind of deadpan timing that made his debut such a treat.

Sparsh Shrivastava’s Bugs provides the necessary counterweight. Where Hardik is all instinct and no plan, Bugs is all plan and no instinct, and the early mission-setup banter between them crackles with the specific energy of two people who genuinely like each other but are fundamentally incompatible under pressure. The first half’s camaraderie has drawn consistent praise, Bollywood Bubble noted the film “starts on a promising note and delivers a fun first half filled with jokes, references and an entertaining camaraderie between its leads”, and that assessment is accurate. The jokes land. The references are deployed with affection rather than desperation. For a stretch, this feels like the best Hindi buddy comedy in years.

Where the Wheels Come Off

Then the second half arrives, and with it a curious loss of nerve. The film’s central tension, unqualified friends thrust into national security roles, requires escalation, but escalation is exactly what the screenplay cannot sustain. Once the terrorist plot moves from background threat to foreground obligation, the comedy has nowhere to hide. The confrontation sequences with the terrorist elements (led by Yashpal Sharma’s Rawal and Dinesh Lal Yadav’s Bansi) are staged with competence but without the anarchic spark that made the first half sing. It’s as though Khemu the director became so focused on delivering a legitimate action-thriller climax that he forgot what made the setup so enjoyable in the first place.

The pacing issues that critics have flagged are real and structural, not merely a matter of individual scenes dragging. The film’s editing rhythm, sharp and punchy for the first seventy minutes, becomes noticeably more laboured once the mission proper begins. Scenes that should take ninety seconds stretch to three minutes. Exposition that could be implied gets stated. The energy that felt effortless starts to feel worked for, and that’s a death knell for a comedy built on the illusion of spontaneity.

This isn’t an unfamiliar trajectory for Hindi genre hybrids. For a recent example of a promising premise losing its way in the back half, our review of Daayra review traced a similar structural collapse. And the phenomenon of a strong opening giving way to narrative drift is one we examine frequently across Hindi Thriller reviews.

Khemu the Performer, Khemu the Director

It’s worth separating the two Khemus at work here, because they’re operating at different levels of effectiveness. As a performer, Khemu remains one of the most effortlessly likeable actors in the industry. His Hardik is a character built entirely from reaction shots and misplaced confidence, and he sells every beat. There’s a moment early in the mission setup where Hardik attempts to bluff his way through a tactical briefing, and Khemu plays it with the specific desperation of a man who knows he’s out of his depth but is committed to the bit. It’s the kind of performance that reminds you why he’s been a reliable presence in Hindi comedies for so long.

As a director, though, he hasn’t quite solved the problem of how to sustain comedic energy across a 145-minute runtime. Madgaon Express clocked in at a tighter 143 minutes but felt shorter because its escalation was constant, the stakes kept rising, and the comedy kept pace. Vibe front-loads its best material and then asks the audience to wait patiently while it fulfills its action-thriller obligations. The imbalance isn’t fatal, but it’s noticeable, and it’s the primary reason the film falls short of its potential.

Preity Zinta’s return to the screen as Madam H is a welcome presence, though the role doesn’t give her much to do beyond looking enigmatic and delivering exposition with authority. One suspects there’s a more interesting film lurking in Madam H’s perspective on the chaos she’s unleashed by recruiting these two, but the screenplay never quite finds it.

The Verdict

Vibe is a film of two halves operating at dramatically different levels of inspiration. The first seventy minutes are genuinely funny, well-paced, and anchored by a pair of performances that understand exactly what kind of movie they’re in. The final seventy-five minutes are competent but increasingly joyless, trading comedic momentum for plot mechanics that never quite justify the trade. For fans of Khemu’s particular brand of slacker comedy, and for anyone who’s been waiting for a Hindi buddy movie that doesn’t condescend to its audience, there’s enough here to recommend a theatrical viewing. But those seeking consistent pacing throughout should temper their expectations. The Dark Heaven verdict that have plagued several recent releases prove to be Vibe‘s most significant obstacle as well. It’s a film that starts like a sprint and finishes like a jog, and the contrast is impossible to ignore.

Rating: 3/5

Vibe is now playing in theatres.