Never Ending Movie Carnival
Never Ending Movie Carnival
Highway Love review: “Breezy, charming and brims with youthful flamboyance”
What: I have always enjoyed romantic stories – they act as detours when we are carpet-bombed with a plethora of OTT content, overdosed with crime, suspense, dark thrillers and psychological mysteries.
Highway Love synopsis
Highway Love, starring Ritwik Sahore and Gayatri Bhardwaj, takes you on an unconventional ride where you discover love – the most basic of human emotions in all its youthful flamboyance and spirit. Gayatri plays Inaaya, a confident and extrovert girl, who is abandoned by his boyfriend in the Mumbai-Pune highway and Ritwik plays Kartik aka Dhundhun, an introvert, who is looking for someone on the highway to fix his flat tyre. An unexpected friendship strikes between the two strangers – Dhundhun takes Inaya to his home at Mahabaleswar where she meets his parents and friends. What starts off as a friendship, gradually turns into a journey of love and companionship.
After the success of Ishq Express, Ritwik and Gayatri sink their teeth into the characters who feel so authentic and at ease in expressing themselves. They are as diverse as chalk and cheese, and as they say, opposites attract, the two develop feelings despite the differences in attitudes and circumstantial hurdles.
Director Sahir Raza’s treatment is fresh and light-hearted – steers away from bumps of complexities and depths of trouble. But he succeeds in giving the notions of honesty and expression and even unrequited love. The sequences that he conjures in his tale feel natural and lived-in, enriched with earnest performances from the lead. Gayatri imbues Inaaya with spunk and vivacity and vulnerability and Ritwik brings in a Kartik Aryaan type charm to his sober character. Kanupriya Pandit plays Dhundhun’s mom with commendable spontaneity but I observed a moderate degree of stiffness in Max Fernandez playing his dad.
I go with 3.5 stars out of 5 for Highway Love. The 4-episode series is streaming on Amazon miniTV from 16th June 2023.
Ahwaan Padhee, is an IT Techie/Business Consultant by profession and a film critic/cinephile by passion, is also associated with Radio Playback as well, loves writing and conducting movie quizzes. More By Ahwaan Padhee