‘Loveyapa’ review: Full disclosure

Khushi Kapoor and Junaid Khan star in this high-pitched comedy about a young couple forced to swap phones

Updated9 Feb 2025, 09:37 AM IST

Khushi Kapoor in 'Loveyapa' — Khushi Kapoor in ’Loveyapa’

Gaurav Sachdeva (Junaid Khan) is fondly referred to as Gucci by everyone from his mother to his college gang and his girlfriend Baani (Khushi Kapoor). The young couple engages in a kind of sanitised romance, where they never go beyond holding hands or sharing modest photos via chat. This would fit in a Rajshri Productions film but seems unrealistically old-school and unbelievable in a 2025 romcom where fat-shaming, sextortion, Tinder and deepfakes are talking points (albeit made in passing).

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Writer Sneha Desai adapts the 2022 Tamil film Love Today, and Advait Chandan directs the Gen Z rom-com, which runs at 138 minutes and stretches to the finish. A tuneless and pounding soundtrack, accompanied by elementary lyrics, matches the infantile antics of the characters—both adults and young adults.

In order to test Gucci and Baani’s relationship, her controlling, righteous father Atul Kumar Sharma (Ashutosh Rana) applies a test. The pair must exchange their cell phones for a day. This, according to him, is the ultimate test of trust and compatibility. A lawyer, Sharma comes up with expert comments such as “Accounts and urine must be completely clear.”

So far, a few laughs, a situation rife with comic possibilities and an awkward enough lead pair who you think might be able to pull it off. But once the phones are exchanged, the narrative begins to splinter. The couple’s secrets, reactions, accusations, defence and the performances by Khan and Kapoor veer towards petulant and petty. Gucci’s repeated response to Baani’s discoveries about her boyfriend’s creepy antics is ‘boys are like this’ or ‘this is what boys do’. Baani too is rather tone deaf, bringing along a back-up suitor to her meetings with Gaurav.

Chandan overuses examples to make a point, e.g. split screens, snapshots of chat histories with exes, dating app communications, a fake video with unlikely virality, casually implanting larger themes of cyber-bullying and fake news within.

Across Delhi, the Sachdeva household is preparing for Gucci’s older sister Kiran’s (Tanvika Parlikar) arranged marriage to dentist Anupam (Kiku Sharda). This relationship serves both as an alternate, more mature point of view but Gaurav’s situation soon begins to rub off onto Kiran’s perspective. The one voice of reason, the character with the best grasp on reality is Gaurav’s mother, performed delightfully by Grusha Kapoor, who rues the young generation’s obsession with mobile phones.

The control and evil idea executed by the patriarchal father, who ultimately judges his daughter without concern or conversation is glossed over. In the face of this, it’s heartening to see Gaurav man up, though Khan is given barely any scenes to convey that character trait. Kapoor is bright as the charming girl in love, but stiff in the emotionally charged scenes. Khan and Kapoor are easy with one another but in a film that feels more like a comic strip.

‘Loveyapa’ review: Full disclosure

Khushi Kapoor and Junaid Khan star in this high-pitched comedy about a young couple forced to swap phones

Also read: ‘The Amateur’ by Saikat Majumdar: The evolution of a radical rule-breaker

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