Unfortunately, I’m not on team Kunal Khemu. I used to be, when I thought of him as an actor who didn’t get his due. However, his directorial debut, Madgaon Express (2024), changed that. Laced with typical “boys-will-be-boys” silliness, I found myself drifting off during many points of the inanity that was unfolding on screen. It needs a special kind of wit and sorcery to keep people invested in a film where nothing truly matters but the makers’ whimsy. Then I heard his views on pay parity, on his wife Soha Ali Khan’s podcast, and he didn’t seem all that wise. It’s futile to assume the above instances wouldn’t colour my perspective of his directorial venture, Vibe, a film he has also co-produced, and is starring in. But for the sake of fairness, I have to concede that there are few things more effortless in Hindi cinema than Khemu enacting a gag he wrote.Hardik (Khemu, named after his Go Goa Gone character) is slacking his way through life. Recently out of rehab, after being admitted at the insistence of his brother-like friend Bhagirath (Sparsh Shrivastava), Hardik has a job waiting for him. Bhagirath or ‘Bugs’ is a straight-A friend, always watching over him, sending him money, worried about his well-being. He’s the adarsh baalak (ideal boy), who wakes up and dutifully follows his schedule. He recommended Hardik for the job in his tech company, so he can have a fresh start, keeping him on the wagon.A still from Vibe. Screengrab from Youtube.Kemmu’s grasp on situational humour, and language, are solid. The tone is set in the first scene where Bugs consults his eccentric boss (played by Rajesh Krishnan, the director of Lootcase, starring Khemu), who laughs at the most inopportune moment. I could watch sketches featuring Bugs, Hardik and their boss for over two hours. Hence, it’s sad that Krishnan doesn’t appear again in the film after that first scene. The problem with breaking the fourth wall and saddling the audience with pop-culture references is they lose novelty very quickly and the emotional stakes disappear. If everything is, in fact, self aware, and every tense situation will be punctured by a joke, then what does any of it matter? Might as well wait for the punchline.Khemu is a good performer and observer of comedy rhythm, which ensures the first hour flies by. Despite warnings from Bugs about the strict sexual harassment policies at the workplace, Hardik is smitten by the new marketing intern, Kareena (Vanshika Dhir). “Kapoor?” Hardik asks her, after being introduced to her. What could have been creepy, remains a goofy, charming track. It’s revealed that Kareena is a pawn in a larger terror plot being planned by her brother Abu Al-Sayed (Hiten Paintal). Hence, embroiling both Hardik and Bugs as unlikely undercover agents by the Indian national security establishment, headed by Madam H (Preity Zinta). Zinta is good in her brief role, where she can’t believe her entire career had led to these two donkeys.A still from Vibe. Screengrab from Youtube.Parodies often get a bad rep for being derivative, but never have spy parodies been more in vogue in Hindi cinema than now. Hence, it’s not all that surprising to see Vir Das’s Happy Patel and Vibe releasing in the same year. While Das’s film is more peculiar and eccentric about the jokes it wants to tell (along the lines of Johnny English and Get Smart), Kemmu’s film speaks a little more to the moment and feels more homegrown. Most 2020s Indian spy thrillers relish the Pakistan bashing, reckless Islamophobia, and the alpha-male syndrome. Khemu subverts that with a hilarious week-long training montage, where he can’t pass a simple polygraph test, telling his own name, because he’s so ill-equipped. The reveal of the Islamic terror outfit being a front for a nefarious businessman is a mindful choice, buried under a thousand gags.The second hour is when the silliness starts to grate a bit. However, Khemu arguably finds a way to have his cake and eat it too. After playing the mousy Hardik, there comes a moment he turns into the super soldier that his peers have been playing in the last few years. It comes after ingesting a stuck-in-trial serum called Sipahi 1. The punchline of the joke comes towards the end – when Madam H tells him about how most animals administered with Sipahi 1 died within a few days, but Hardik’s history with drug abuse probably saved his life.Vibe is not sophisticated enough to poke fun at the YRF spyverse or satirise the lexicon of Dhurandhar films in a more meaningful way. But it’s also slightly more conscious and ambitious than being a silly parody. There’s a genuinely funny guy at the heart of it. If Khemu needs to be reminded of a cautionary tale of someone who overplayed their hand with pop-culture references and fourth-wall breaking, he will do well to remember the name: Ryan Reynolds. Hopefully, in his next outing, Kunal Khemu won’t wink at his audience as much. We get the joke. *Vibe is playing in theatres