Movie Review – 3 Idiots

I celebrated Christmas by watching Rajkumar Hirani’s 3 Idiots – a movie I had been looking forward to; not because it is based on Chetan Bhagat’s book Five Point Someone but because it was a Rajkumar Hirani movie. Here is my review of probably the most anticipated movie of the year, without any spoilers.

The story :- After few years since their graduation, college mates Farhan (R Madhavan) and Raju (Sharman Joshi) get to know the whereabouts of their missing friend Rancho (Aamir Khan). As they set out to find him, narration starts with flashbacks to the time when Aamir , Sharman and Madhavan were students in the Imperial College of Engineering and Boman Irani was the Director of the college. Just like in Munnabhai where its Sanjay Dutt vs Dean and Medical system, here Aamir takes on the Director and the Education system. Along with the capers of the 3 friends, academic issues like  parental pressure, student suicides, the traditional pattern of imparting of theoretical knowledge are also included in the story.

Since I have not read the book I won’t compare as to how much is the movie faithful to the book.

The actors :- Aamir has managed to look quite young. His gait and his expressions portray a student quite well. But the six pack does not match a 19-20 year old guy’s body. 😀 But yes he has acted quite good and he overshadows all the other characters. Sharman and Madhavan have done good job too as supporting actors. Thankfully, Kareena Kapoor (Aamir’s love interest) is there only for brief moments and has done a decent job. But as usual Boman Irani is perfect in his portrayal of the strict and cruel Director.

The movie :- The movie’s starting scene reminded me of Dil Chahta Hai’s starting scene. The screenplay shuttles between trying to be a laugh riot and trying to make a point. At times there is just too much of the impossibilities of Bollywood masala but then it IS a Bollywood movie. Along with outrageously hilarious scenes, here are some emotional moments too. But there are no moments where one has to cringe while watching the movie with family. All the scenes have been done tactfully. As for the male nudity, one expected that since ragging is an integral part of any engineering story 🙂 Some of the gags and jokes were old ones but still induced laughter. And some of the  lines are here to stay 😉

One can draw several parallels with Hirani’s first movie Munnabhai M.B.B.S. For example this time he introduces the philosophy of ‘Aal izz well’ to give courage to the heart to bear difficulties.

The movies fails a bit in the music category. None of the songs, except All Izz Well, make an impact.I mean the music is good but nothing memorable.

Cinematography and editing is good. Still the movie could have been a bit shorter in length. The second half seems to drag a bit.

The characters seemed to be of Mechanical branch but somehow the screenplay and dialogues talked about machines which comes under Electrical Engineering. 🙂 The movie’s target audience seems to be the youth and their parents as well. I don’t know about the parents but the youth, the students and especially engineering ones will enjoy the movie a lot.

My expectations from a movie are simple – to get entertained and to get my money’s worth. And I believe Vidhu Vinod Chopra and Rajkumar Hirani have delivered the most entertaining movie of the year.

My rating – 4/5

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