Rajkumar Hirani’s ‘3 Idiots’ has definitely turned out to be one of the best films of this decade. It is very loosely based on a novel by Chetan Bhagat. Hirani’s creative team has added many diversions, twists and turns to the story turning it upside down to make it immensely enjoyable, memorable, suspenseful and racy. Bhagat should feel proud to be associated with such a powerful adaptation of his simple story.
Hirani’s third movie after the 2 Munnabhai films again conveys a social message in an entertainingly sarcastic manner. This time Hirani’s takes on India’s higher education system and successfully manages to bring out its shortcomings and fallibilities. Aamir Khan joining hands with the Hirani camp has worked wonders and the film has lived up to its pre-release hype. This is perhaps the first time that a Hindi film shows it main heroes as students of an elite Engineering college. The joys, sorrows, trials, tribulations and hardships of staying in a hostel away from home to pursue an engineering degree are very refreshingly brought out in the film.
The lead actors – Aamir Khan, Madhavan, Sherman Joshi, Kareena & Boman Irani are absolutely perfect. Boman Irani deserves special mention for coming up with a fantastic performance, which should easily rank as his best so far. Whoever thought of casting 40 plus Aamir as a 20 year-old college student deserves to be congratulated. As I read in one of his interviews, even Aamir was not convinced that he can pull off such a role. But he has done so very admirably. I am surprised how he manages to look so young.
The movie has many hilarious sequences while some are touching. The punch line of ‘All izz well’ is infectious like the ‘jadu ki jhappi’ of Munnabhai films .However, the child-birth scene could have been easily avoided. It somehow mars the authenticity and sincereity of the film lending a touch of histrionic melodrama. It is due to such avoidable scenes that Indian films fall flat at the Oscars. The movie makes fun of Sherman Joshi’s misery-stricken family back-ground which is in bad taste. A paralysed father, an aged unmarried sister and a single earning mother in these inflationary times can definitely not be a reason for amusement!
The music, photography, picturesque locales, and the supporting cast all together make the film immensely enjoyable. I wished the movie would go on for some more time and now I am looking for an opportunity to see it again.