Hilarious & poignant

3 Idiots

Cast: Aamir Khan, R. Madhavan, Sharman Joshi, Boman Irani, Kareena Kapoor, Omi
Director: Rajkumar Hirani
Rating: ****

3 Idiots is a delightful, poignant and charming film that makes you cry while making you laugh hysterically. The film carries with it a simple message in a warm package and delivers it so genuinely and with such ingenuity that you never once feel lectured to. Audiences’ connect with the film is instant and emotional and gets stronger with each brilliant dialogue and clever twist. In one line, Rajkumar Hirani’s 3 Idiots is fully fabulous, but not quite Munnabhai.

It’s difficult to tell the story of 3 Idiots without revealing too much and spoiling your fun. So I’ll stick to the bare bones. The film is set in the past and present. The past is Delhi’s Imperial College of Engineering where we are mostly concerned with three roommates — Farhan Qureshi (R. Madhavan), Raju Rastogi (Sharman Joshi) and Rancho (Aamir Khan) — and their vile, vindictive college director Viru Sahastrabuddhe (Boman Irani), nicknamed Virus. The present is 10 years after college and involves a road trip.

We begin in the present where Farhan is on board a flight. He gets a phone call, fakes a heart attack, gets off, picks up Raju and both reach their old college to meet Rancho. But Rancho’s not there. Instead there’s old college-mate Chatur Ramalingam (Omi) who is flashing pictures of his million-dollar bungalow and reminding them of the 10-year-old challenge. Chatur knows where Rancho is and would like to compare balance-sheets with him. So the three drive to Shimla to find Rancho.

In flashback we meet the three roommates: First-year boys in their chaddies are doing the bidding of their seniors. Rancho walks in and without uttering a word turns possible humiliation into a science lesson that involves some piss and an electric wire. His reputation is sealed as the quirky genius and a smart-ass. Rancho works magic with machines, mutters his “all izz well” mantra and is in college to pursue knowledge not percentage. Farhan, it is revealed, is a talented photographer but his father has sacrificed so much for him to become an engineer that Farhan wouldn’t dare say that he’d prefer a zoom lens over a compass-and-divider set. Raju is from a poor family and the only hope for his comatose father, unwed sister and a mother who is hassled about the rising prices of bhindi. (Note the use of black and white here that makes soppy go stylish.) Then there’s the lisping, Einstein-haired, ambidextrous director Virus whose first lesson to students is “compete or die”.

In goofy hostel rooms we meet the students — some brilliant ones whose fates are sealed and others, like Chatur, who may not speak Hindi but know how to work the education system. Chatur, who suffers from academic bulimia and flatulence of various types and smells, is generally annoying. Rancho and Farhan pull a prank on him — they replace the word chamatkar with balatkar and dhan with sthan (breast) in his speech in praise of Virus — and bring the house down. A student commits suicide, Rancho has several run-ins with Virus and tells him a thing or two about nurturing brilliance and not grades. But Virus is unwavering. Rancho also meets Virus’ cute daughter Pia (Kareena Kapoor), instantly disapproves of her fiancé and proves that she’s about to marry an annoying moron. Soon sparks fly and songs follow. Rancho eventually tops his class, fixes his friends’ lives, proves his point to Virus and disappears. Back to the present where the travellers reach Rancho’s house in Shimla but don’t find him there. After a fight over a flush and a dead man’s ashes, a secret is revealed and they take a detour to crash Pia’s wedding. The roadies continue their journey to find Rancho...

3 Idiots has overwhelming highs and after each one you want to dry your eyes and give director Rajkumar Hirani a jadoo ki jhappi. Barring the fantastical ending and the corny child delivery scene, the film is so spontaneous that it seems like Hirani just let the characters do their own thing. Though the story, based on Chetan Bhagat’s 5 Point Someone, is straight forward, the plot’s gentle twists make the film sparkle at every turn. Comic timing is perfect throughout and the dialogues are quick and brilliant. The film very smartly and cleverly mocks our education system’s stupidity, but never overdoes it.

Hirani truly is the god of small things — he adds deft touches and quirky characters to mundane scenes. Each character, no matter how short-lived, is full-bodied and brings a new flavour. You develop affinity for each one — especially Raju’s mother and Millimetre. The music is good, but we’ve heard better stuff from Shantanu Moitra.

R. Madhavan, the film’s narrator, is endearing and shines in his scene with his screen father. Sharman Joshi is very good too. Kareena Kapoor is breezy, funny and feels real. Looks like she’s out of the zero zone. Omi is superb as Chatur. Boman Irani is as good as he usually is.

Till the interval, 3 Idiots has an acute Aamir Khan obsession. And yet in the end you don’t feel like you really know Rancho. Though Rancho has all the answers and fixes stuff — people, their things, their lives — he doesn’t feel real. He is too perfect. Despite the underlying sadness his character seems to have, mostly pain at an idiotic education system that claims several lives every year, Rancho is like an avatar — a playful, wise god who has come down on earth to say his piece. Despite this flaw in his character, Aamir is as good as he was in Tare Zameen Par and touches a chord.