Movie reviews: Hollywood and Indie, specializing in independent comedies, dramas, thrillers and romance.
Tuesday, July 12, 2011
3 Idiots: Movie Review
A college comedy, and joking aside, they're not idiots.
A college comedy. You know the genre, movies where idiots get into college and then continue to behave as idiots, and usually by the end they get a girl. 3 Idiots is not such a movie. Mostly because our three protagonists are not idiots. Rancho is a smart-alecky trouble-maker but he's not an idiot. Raju and Farhan might fail a lot of exams, but they try hard and they have good hearts. Same goes for the movie.
2009
Directed by: Rajkumar Hirani
Screenplay by: Vidhu Vinod Chopra, Rajkumar Hirani and Abhijat Joshi
Starring: Aamir Khan, Sharman Joshi and Madhavan
The movie itself goes through a lot of ups and downs. We start with a plot, we think. A group of "idiots" need to find Rancho, we don't know who he is yet, but I was intrigued enough that I wanted to find him too. After introducing us to all the characters we had to go through some low-end humour to get to some smart humour. In most classes, Rancho is there ready to teach his teachers how to teach. Arrogant professors generally don't like that. But I liked it. By using humour we slowly get to the point of learning engineering versus learning, that there's a difference between knowledge and memorization.
This is a Bollywood movie in every way—from the vivid colours, to the songs, to the dancing and singing. I'm sure that's all normal, but it seemed out of place in a male college comedy. What also seemed out of place was the over two-hours run time. I thought it was over countless of times but they always seemed to find another story-line to wrap up. Although it was too long for me, it was impressive that they actually paid attention to the story. Compared to Hollywood comedies, it was impressive that there was even a story in the first place.
The characters were all endearing and funny, and the lead, Rancho (Aamir Khan) had so much intelligence, friendly energy and a sparkle that he could probably carry any movie. "3 Idiots" has its faults with an overly-long length, too many story-lines and some immature humour, but there's enough heart, smarts and originality to remain enjoyable.
