The most recent movie directed by Raju Hirani, whose portfolio consists of the phenomenally successful Munnabhai series. 3 Idiots is essentially about 3 college students and their experiences vis-a-vis the Indian education system (more specifically an engineering college) telling us - the unsuspecting public - that the odds favor the rote learning robots produced by the aforementioned system as opposed to free thinkers attempting to and sometimes tragically failing to find their true calling in life. The movie stars Aamir Khan, Madhavan, Sharman Joshi - all 3 alumni of the popular Viva-La-Revolution themed "Rang De Basanti" - here playing both young college students in their late teens/ early 20's shown in flashback, and slightly older men set in current times which is a few years after their college years. Boman Irani - a staple of Hirani movies playing the rigid, negative person who eventually turns over a new leaf at the end of the movie - is around once again doing more of the same in a slightly different getup. Here, he plays the inflexible and insensitive principal of the engineering college in which our 3 Idiots aspire to get educated or earn a degree or both.
The movie begins with the characters played by Madhavan's Farhan and Sharman Joshi's Raju trying to find Aamir Khan's Rancho as they seem to have lost touch with him ever since they graduated from their engineering college together many years ago. It is during this search that the movie flashes back to their college life and their struggles with the rigid establishment. And as they seem to get closer and closer to locating Rancho, the flash backs continue to tell us, nay, beat us on the head about how so very depressing the whole education system is and how it kills eager students from the inside.
I shouldn't be so harsh though - 3 Idiots isn't all that bad. The problem is that while the message is somewhat decent - that the Indian education system favors rote learning and that Indian parents force their children into Engineering or Medicine related disciplines - both of which are true - it is so far from new that any Indian who needs to watch this movie to learn about the state of affairs is the real idiot. Also, 3 Idiots has an overly simplistic take on the whole issue as well. This simplistic take is delivered via various unsubtle scenes (which unfortunately are far from few) whose sole purpose are to serve as setups for Rancho, the anti-establishment whizkid, to first demonstrate how very clever he is in comparison to his inept lecturers and fellow bookish students, and then next to carp on about how the whole system is so rotten that it produces f*ks like them and not studs like him.
The characters too were all completely one-dimensional to really be able to relate to in any realistic fashion with the all-knowing Rancho easily being the most difficult to relate to. Only Sharman Joshi, who plays the self-doubting Raju who eventually finds the confidence to tackle the naysayers, and Omi Vaidya (Chatur Ramalingam in the movie) who plays the punching bag rote-learning bookworm really tried to break out of the narrow confines written for their roles. And the direction, while very competent, was sadly very much like the education system it beats down with glee - formulaic and by the book.
Occasionally though, there was some surprisingly dark humor - the hospital scenes for instance were good tragi-comic. Moments such as those briefly elevated the movie while bringing back memories of the classic "Jaane Bhi Do Yaaron" - but thats all they were - moments and very brief at that.
Overall, for a movie with pretensions of being social commentary of sorts, the message was far from convincing. If the director really wanted to take on the education system - he should have focused on primary or secondary education when the rote learning behavior actually takes shape. But then if he did, he wouldn't be able to get a bunch of popular actors in their mid 40's to impossibly play one-dimensional college kids and thereby lose out on the ability to hype the movie and rake in the big bucks all the while harboring pretensions of bringing in radical societal change.
(image from naachgaana.com)
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