Chupa Chupi Review: A Popular Web Series Loses Its Way On The Big Screen

Over the last few years, sequels have become increasingly common. While some manage to carry the story forward and add something new, many disappear without leaving any impact. Then there are franchise films that share only the title with their predecessors and have little to do with the original story. A similar trend can also be seen when successful television shows and web series are turned into feature films.

Hindi audiences have seen it happen with Office Office, Baa Bahoo Aur Baby and Khichdi, and the latest and the first ever Assamese addition to that list is Chupa Chupi.

Directed by Pranab Bharali, who has also written the story and screenplay, Chupa Chupi continues the story of his highly successful web series of the same name, released on YouTube around three years ago.

The web series introduced three schoolboys—Dipak (Kaushik Bharadwaj), Chanu or Chanakya (Jit Kalita) and Rup (Saptarshi Gogoi)—whose lives change after mobile phones arrive in their village. Their curiosity leads them to pornography and desire, drawing them towards Urmila Bou (Snigdha Gogoi), whose husband works outside the village, and she is alone in the village.

The series treated her emotional and physical needs with maturity and honesty, presenting her as believable and authentic rather than as a stereotype.

Snigdha Gogoi’s performance added further realism to the role, making Urmila Bou one of the most compelling characters in the series.

Like most men in the village, the boys are attracted to her. Things take a dark turn when they kill a man while trying to protect Urmila’s sanity, a crime that lands them behind bars. Since they were juveniles when the crime was committed, Dipak, Rup and Chanu do not spend long behind bars. Under the juvenile justice system, they are sent to a correctional facility rather than a regular prison and are released a few years later after completing their term.

The series ended with their release from the correctional facility, introducing viewers to Kamal Lochan’s Billu and leaving the story on a cliffhanger, hinting at more to come.

The series, with its bold theme, fresh storytelling and honest performances from most of the cast, felt genuine and left a lasting impression on the audience.

Capitalising on the web series’ success, the makers continued the story as a feature film rather than another season. The film promised to show what happened after the characters’ release from jail and to explore Billu’s backstory, his imprisonment, and his relationship with Urmila.

The teasers and promotional material strongly hinted at all of this, making Chupa Chupi one of the most anticipated Assamese films of the year.

The film, however, does not live up to those expectations.

The first twenty minutes are engaging. They create suspense, re-establish the friendship between Dipak, Rup and Chanu, and blend Billu into the group. The bond between the four friends and the village drunkard Bogo (Jintu Kumar Kashyap) works well. Bogo, unable to move on from the loss of Hiraamoni (Ragini Kaushik), is among the few characters who hold the audience’s attention.

Just when the story appears ready to move forward, it starts to fall apart.

Once the initial intrigue fades, the film starts moving in circles. Characters are introduced, incidents pile up, and subplots are added, but none of them takes the story anywhere. It keeps building towards something bigger, only to end up nowhere.

The biggest problem with Chupa Chupi is its lack of a real story at the centre.

The web series had a clear narrative around which all the other events revolved. The film feels like the opposite. It often seems that the makers built a feature from side plots and then tried to create a central story around them. As a result, the film struggles to decide what it wants to be. It is not a proper comedy, thriller, love story or social satire. It keeps touching all these genres without fully becoming any of them.

The screenplay only makes the problem worse.

The film is full of continuity and logic issues. The props and art direction fail to convincingly establish the period in which the story is supposedly set. A Nokia 1100 with a loudspeaker is perhaps the most glaring example. Such a basic error raises serious questions about attention to detail and suggests that very little effort was made to ensure period accuracy.

Another baffling example comes towards the end of the film. Kamal Lochan’s character takes a massive blow to the head and bleeds profusely. He is later treated by Sangita (Boibhobi Goswami), a nursing student. The circumstances leading to her attending him are difficult to justify and hard to understand. She bandages the wound, but just a few minutes later, the bandage is gone and so is the injury. There is not even a scar left behind.

The logic fares no better. A mobile phone continues to function perfectly after being carried through a river, while an active SIM card is conveniently recovered from a PCO that has been lying closed and abandoned for months. It is another moment where convenience takes precedence over logic.

Individually, these may seem like minor oversights. Taken together, however, they point to a level of carelessness that becomes difficult to ignore.

The entire second half drags badly.

A few minutes into the second half, the film completely loses its way. An attempted theft goes wrong, the thieves take a toddler hostage, and somehow manage to escape an angry mob by swimming across a shallow river into a deserted jungle. Once there, they conveniently produce dry matchboxes and light a bonfire, despite having just crossed the river. It is the kind of sequence that raises more questions than it answers.

And then come the police and security forces, a village feast and a cultural programme that seemingly begins around midnight and continues endlessly. One improbable event follows another with sheer convenience, while logic takes a back seat. None of these episodes moves the story forward, and they only make the film’s already excessive runtime feel even longer.

A particularly absurd sequence involves a police operation that feels more like a comedy sketch than an actual operation. The policemen appear clueless, while the SP (Anjoo Dahal) orders not only her police staff but also the CRPF personnel, both in and out of the operation, as though they were local constables.

The scene shows a lack of understanding of how these forces work and is hard to take seriously.

Films do not always need to be realistic, but they should at least maintain a degree of authenticity. Here, even that seems missing.

In the acting department, Arun Nath, as the village headman, and Jintu Kumar Kashyap, as Bogo, stand out. Both actors remain convincing throughout the film and bring some much-needed life to the proceedings.

Most of the remaining cast have very little to do. Their presence or absence hardly affects the story.

The romantic track between Kaushik Bharadwaj and Boibhobi Goswami’s Sangita adds little to the film and never becomes emotionally engaging.

Popular anchor Chakrapani Parashar appears in a meaningless guest role as the anchor for the late-night cultural function. With his oiled, middle-parted hair, a mole, and a pen tucked behind his ear, the character looks like a loud comic stereotype from an earlier era of Indian cinema. While the look may have been intentional, the humour rarely works.

Urmila Bou and Jayanta Sulfa were two of the strongest characters in the web series, and major reasons why it worked as well as it did.

The film does justice to neither character.

Snigdha Gogoi has very little to do despite playing a character who was once central to the story. Kishor Tahbildar’s Jayanta Sulfa, who was cunning, manipulative and threatening in the series, is reduced to a comic villain. Much of what made the character memorable is lost.

Billu suffers from the same problem.

His appearance in the final moments of the web series created curiosity and excitement. The film fails to take advantage of that. Billu has no meaningful journey of his own and leaves very little impact on the overall narrative.

The guest appearances by Jatin Bora and Himanshu Prasad Das as Rama add very little to the film. Rama is the same man murdered by Dipak, Rup and Chanu in the web series, the crime for which they were eventually jailed. Yet his appearance here barely adds anything to the story. Both guest appearances feel more forced than organic.

Ironically, where Chupa Chupi struggles the most in writing, it performs better technically.

The background score and sound design are among the film’s strongest aspects. In several scenes, the music does more to sustain interest than the screenplay itself. The colour grading and visual effects are also better than what is usually seen in many Assamese productions, though there is still room for improvement.

The editing feels patchy, but the real problem lies in the screenplay. When scenes fail to move the story forward, editing alone cannot solve it. The result is a film that runs for more than 160 minutes, yet the material never justifies such a length.

Pranab Bharali has shown in his earlier works that he understands visual storytelling well. There are several well-composed and beautifully shot moments in Chupa Chupi. Unfortunately, the writing never matches the quality of the visuals.

The film ends by teasing a third instalment, with Jatin Bora’s character reminding viewers that the story is not over yet. One can only hope that the next chapter remains closer to the strengths of the original series and avoids the mistakes made here.

A web series should be adapted into a feature film only when the story genuinely demands it. Popularity alone is not enough. Chupa Chupi proves that.

Despite successful source material, a few strong performances, and decent technical work, the film never justifies why this continuation was made in the first place.

Rating: 2/5

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