‘Kho Gaye Hum Kahan’ movie review: Bandra blues

A still from ‘Kho Gaye Hum Kahan’
| Photo Credit: Special Arrangement

Imaad, 25, is a Tinder addict, so you can picture his bewilderment when his date turns up with a camera in her bag and not a twinkle in her eyes. The girl, Simran, played by Kalki Koechlin, isn’t there to bump uglies; she wants to photograph Imaad as he vegetates in his libidinous loneliness. “It’s for a project of mine,” she explains. “It’s called The People of Tinder”. Scenes of this sort capture the empty heart of Kho Gaye Hum Kahan — effortfully hip, and training its lens on characters who are not very fascinating.

Imaad (Siddhant Chaturvedi) is a struggling standup comic in Mumbai. ‘Struggling’ is a strong word, since he has a large inheritance and a pad in Bandra. He shares it with his bestie Ahana (Ananya Panday), a corporate consultant; a third friend, Neil (Adarsh Gourav), went to the same boarding school as them. After life throws this trio impossible curveballs like Ahana’s boyfriend demanding a break and Neil realising he needs to move up in life, they decide to ‘start up’, floating a fitness studio that Imaad will happily invest in.

Social media ties the multiple strands. Ahana begins to stalk her ex on Instagram, while Neil gets a huge follower bump after clicking a selfie with Malaika Arora at the gym. Imaad, in his enormously unfunny standup sets, ruminates bitterly on the emptiness and pretense of the digital age. Debutant director Arjun Varain Singh and co-writers Zoya Akhtar and Reema Kagti present a half-baked critique of influencer culture, everyone obsessed with ‘likes’ and ‘followers’ and dismissive of their true, authentic selves. It is a limited view of a complex sociological phenomenon, and the writing tends to get judgemental (online trolls, this film argues, are simply resentful of second-generation Bollywood stars).

It doesn’t boost its cause that Kho Gaye Hum Kahan has all the aesthetic markers of a content video. Tanay Satam’s cinematography is marked by a sterile, soft-focus beauty. There is a cameo by ‘comedy consultant’ Sapan Verma, and two of the songs are by viral favourites OAFF–Savera. None of these internet-age artists seem to lead the kind of vacuous, undeserved lives Kho Gaye Hum Kahan hints at; if anything, it’s Bollywood that seems eager to cash in on their fame.

After Gehraiyaan (2022), Chaturvedi is cast in a very similar role, a moony investor with a traumatic past. Panday, too, appears to rehash her Tia from Shakun Batra’s film. Only Gourav holds his own, playing this film’s version of an ‘outsider’ role. Towards the end, there is a scene where Neil apologises to his father for his impertinence. The middle-class building he grew up in and has belatedly learned to value is called — you guessed it — ‘Roots’.

Kho Gaye Hum Kahan is currently streaming on Netflix