{"id":737,"date":"2007-04-03T10:45:00","date_gmt":"2007-04-03T10:45:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/film\/2007\/04\/review-honeymoon-travels-pvt-ltd-2.html"},"modified":"2018-05-28T15:27:23","modified_gmt":"2018-05-28T19:27:23","slug":"review-honeymoon-travels-pvt-ltd-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/film\/2007\/04\/review-honeymoon-travels-pvt-ltd-2.html","title":{"rendered":"Review : Honeymoon Travels Pvt. Ltd."},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a>Note : The edited version of this review appears at Planet Bollywood<\/i><\/a>.
\n<\/i>
\nRating : Good (3.85\/5)
\nGenre : Drama
\nYear : 2007
\nRunning time : 2 hours
\nDirector : Rima Kagti
\nCast : Shabana Azmi, Diya Mirza, Kaykay Menon, Raima Sen,Abahay Deol, Minissha Lamba, Vikram Chatwal, Sandhya Mridul, Ranvir Shourie , Boman Irani, Amisha Patel, Karan Khanna<\/b><\/p>\n

HONEYMOON TRAVELS PVT. LTD. : THE FEEL-GOOD FILM OF THE YEAR !<\/i>
\n
\n<\/b>
\nFinally ! After wading through the duds of 2007, this film is one I actually enjoyed watching. I had expected HTPL to be good, seeing that it came via young producers (Farhan & Zoya Akhtar) known for their different film treatments. And it is \u2013 it\u2019s different, fun and quirky, weaving together the stories of 6 couples on their honeymoons on the same tourist bus.<\/p>\n

There are old-timers Nahid & Oscar (Shabana & Irani) on their second marriages, reflective and forgiving of live. Then there\u2019s the Gujrati couple Hitesh and Shilpa (Ranvir and Diya) who can\u2019t get anywhere near each other without scrabbling, the super-compatible Parsi couple Aspi and Zara (Abhay and Minissha), and the oddball NRI husband Bunty(Chatwal) with his desi, fun-loving wife Madhu (Mridul). Kaykay Menon plays an uptight and insecure Bengali man Partho very much in love with his beautiful, free-spirited wife Mili (Sen). And rounding off the sextet are the Kapoors, the Punjabi couple comprising of talkative Pinky (Patel) and contemplative Vicky (Khanna).<\/p>\n

This is a fantastic cast \u2013 everyone fits their characters right down to their accents \u2013 do note Ranvir Shourie introducing himself as \u201cHites\u201d and wife as \u201cSilpa\u201d. The film starts off with the start of the bus journey, and Kagti throws us a couple of red herrings, like Shilpa crying her eyes out at going on the honeymoon. Then there\u2019s a opinionated bus driver, and a mysterious motor-bike, rider following the bus. And while everything looks lovey-dovey in the beginning, with familiarity and time, problems crop up. Kagti deals with each couple and their quirks without letting go of the momentum, and ties together each story nicely into the larger narrative.<\/p>\n

This tale is firmly rooted in reality, in that it\u2019s finally about what one wants out of one-self, one\u2019s significant other, and life. However Kagti is not above taking forays into the fantastic, adding to the pep quotient, and giving us wonderful snippets like Pinky rising out of fur-lined clam-shells, and a demure wife beating the crap out of hoodlums while her husband watches open-mouthed. I was at times amused, at times surprised, at times moved, and at other times laughing my head off. All in all, I was thoroughly engrossed in these honeymooner\u2019s lives, feeling for them, and wishing them all happiness.<\/p>\n

The sound track of this film is gorgeous. From the delicate \u201cHalke-halke\u201d (sung by \u201cBombay Viking\u201d<\/a> Neeraj Sridhar) to the foot-tapping \u201cSajnaji\u201d, vocalized by Sunidhi Chauhan, the songs suit the mood and situations of the film. Direction is good, and the film veers from the beaten track in that it is not afraid to experiment and take chances. The script while banking upon that old adage \u201cTruth is stranger than fiction\u201d, mixes the real with the ludicrous and the funny, and doesn\u2019t hesitate to laugh at itself. Something which very Bollywood films do, and do well.<\/p>\n

To sum up, this is a clean, fresh, and enjoyable film, moving away from the clich\u00e9d old Bollywood formula. If this is Kagti\u2019s debut as full-fledged writer and director, I eagerly await her next offering.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Note : The edited version of this review appears at Planet Bollywood. Rating : Good (3.85\/5) Genre : Drama Year : 2007 Running time : 2 hours Director : Rima Kagti Cast : Shabana Azmi, Diya Mirza, Kaykay Menon, Raima … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":{"twitter_17000648_17000648":"","facebook_10233691416821117_190635594420624":""},"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","_uag_custom_page_level_css":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[51,76,14,28,15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-737","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-51","category-bollywood","category-drama","category-rating-pg13","category-recommended"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":false,"thumbnail":false,"medium":false,"medium_large":false,"large":false,"1536x1536":false,"2048x2048":false,"post-thumbnail":false,"sow-carousel-default":false},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"amodini","author_link":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/film\/author\/admin"},"uagb_comment_info":7,"uagb_excerpt":"Note : The edited version of this review appears at Planet Bollywood. Rating : Good (3.85\/5) Genre : Drama Year : 2007 Running time : 2 hours Director : Rima Kagti Cast : Shabana Azmi, Diya Mirza, Kaykay Menon, Raima … Continue reading →","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p45CAb-bT","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/film\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/737","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/film\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/film\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/film\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/film\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=737"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/film\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/737\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7702,"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/film\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/737\/revisions\/7702"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/film\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=737"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/film\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=737"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/film\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=737"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}