Kapkapiii

Kapkapiii Movie Review Rating:

Star Cast: Shreyas Talpade, Tusshar Kapoor, Siddhi Idnani, Sonia Rathee, Dinkar Sharma, Varun Pande, Abishek Kumar, Dherendra Tiwari, Jay Thakkar, and Zakir Hussain.

Director: Sangeeth Sivan

What’s Good: Shreyas Talpade and Tusshar Kapoor try to carry the day.

What’s Bad: Story, script, and more!

Loo Break: Feel free to go.

Watch or Not?: Definitely—if you are a moneyed masochist! Otherwise, stay away.

Language: Hindi

Available On: Theatrical release

Runtime: 138 Minutes

User Rating:

A group of vella (unemployed) buddies from diverse parts of the country stay in a semi-ramshackle ‘apartment’ in Faridabad, where two girls also reside in a parallel setup. Only one of the boys earns, and he is romantically involved with a mysterious girl on the phone.

For want of things to occupy their time, Manu (Shreyas Talpade) decides to play with the Ouija board, and the others join with enthusiasm. When they all join in the ‘fun,’ they are warned that conducting a séance just for the sake of it and fooling with it can have dire consequences. And soon enough, things start going wrong with everyone. Manu decides to invite his good friend Kabir (Tusshar Kapoor) in for a few days, and things get worse.

Kapkapiii Movie Review: Script Analysis

This film attempts to remake the 2023 Malayalam film Romancham in the era where remakes are generally passe. It’s another matter that few remakes are so bad that we wonder what the original was like, especially since it has been considered worthy of being reprised in another language for a wider audience.

Saurabh Anand and Kumar Priyadarshi’s script is more scrambled than an egg or a police code and is generally unfunny. Sporadic dialogues do shine, but generally, even toilet humour and double-meaning dialogues cram the film.

After a tiresomely overlong first half, the second half seems to brighten with the entry of Tusshar Kapoor, but soon, even that falls flat, and the increasing attempts at undiluted horror generally come unstuck. A red herring of one of the main characters as well as Kabir’s mysterious demeanour, does create some tepid suspense, but things are neither really scary nor uproarious.

Last but not the least, the climax is as satisfactory as a hair cream for a bald man and leaves the saga incomplete, in the grossly overrated expectation that a sequel will be made! In this respect, the film reminds me of Ram Gopal Varma’s horror drama, Agyaat (2009), where the denouement was supposed to come in a sequel. After the catastrophic reception to it, we are still waiting! And the solution to Kapkapiii is unlikely to be found either!

Kapkapiii Movie Review: Star Performance

A vain attempt at salvaging the film goes to Shreyas Talpade and Tusshar Kapoor, who essay their straight and weird roles with competent skill and maturity, respectively. The former scores in his nuanced humour and confused cockiness (!), while the latter, whose appearance is like an extended cameo, makes his character completely goofy and even scarily so.

The ‘heroines,’ Siddhi Idnani and Sonia Rathee, do well, the latter scoring far higher in a better role as the girl who seems to be possessed. Abishek Kumar as Rivin impresses, and Varun Pandey as Nirup is as sincere an actor as his ‘responsible’ character is shown. The other guys, Nanku (Jay Thakkar), Achyut (Dinker Sharma), and Vijay (Dhirendra Tiwari), also acquit themselves well in their daffy personae. This week is a double bill for Jay and Zakir Hussain as they are also part of the Bhool Chuk Maaf cast. But while Jay gets a longer, better role here, Zakir is wasted.