Loveyapa
Starring: Khushi Kapoor and Junaid Khan
Director: Advait Chandan
Have you seen the 2022 Tamil hit Love Today? Do yourself a favour: don’t! There is a smart, wickedly funny remake Loveyapa now, which does to Love Today what Mehboob Khan’s Mother India did to Aurat.
Let me explain. While the two films are sourced to the same plot, one flies far ahead of the other.
Advait Chandan’s Loveyapa simply… soars! It is breezy and ebullient, and yet, mind it, not all fun and games. There is a very serious message underlining the festivities, the mauj-masti, and the endless bacchanalia. But the grim never overtakes the grin. What we get is a chuckle fest where the funny, smart lines flow like a particularly sassy chat group on WhatsApp, which brings it on in unstoppered merriment.
So bring it on! The war of words between Bani and Gucci (Gaurav), buoyed by a screenplay that knows the young today and their obsession with the phone, is a hoot.
Do the kids actually live so much of their loves on the phone that they have forgotten what real life smells like? This topic comes up in full-blown glory in Loveyapa when Bani’s wily father (Ashutosh Rana, dependably sturdy) agrees to their alliance, provided they swap phones for one day.
That’s it! All hell breaks loose, and God forbid any couple from agreeing to such a catastrophic trust-check plan before marriage. As the soon-to-be-wedded ostensibly for-keeps couple dives deeper and deeper into one another’s phone, unsavoury sordid details emerge from the darkest recesses of the instrument to confront the lovers.
Understandably, this is a very loud film: loud and insistent. As Bani and Gucci, Khushi Kapoor and Junaid Khan go at each other’s throats with hammers and tongs. Their acerbic interface is laced with pithy, prickly comments on how today’s young look at relationships.
At one point, when Bani challenges Gucci about the adult content on his phone, he retorts, “It is because I access such content that I come across decently to you.”
There is a parallel track about Gucci’s sister’s wedding to an affable dentist (Kiku Sharda, bedazzling in his karmic timing) who has his own secrets to hide on his phone. Kiku Sharda’s confessional will have you in tears, which is a rarity in this rock-solid smile binge. Written by Sneha Desai and Pradeep Ranganathan, Loveyapa is a knock on the knuckle, a wakeup call for a generation manically attached to the phone.
More than anything else, this is a film that refuses to swipe left no matter what the provocation. Advait Chandan often nudges phone jargon into the plot without taking it too seriously. Chandan preserves a playful bantering mood without eroding the seriousness of intent. It’s like being at a party where the guests refuse to leave even when the music stops.
