3 Idiots

What is it about Aamir Khan films that makes them special? There are better actors. There are definitely better lookers. Is it the freshness Aamir brings to the screen, or just good choice of scripts?

3 Idiots does justice to all the hoopla created by the Khan tag and corny pant-dropping promos. An entertainer at heart which also serves as a brutally frank agent for the social messages Aamir likes to spread à la RDB and Taare Zameen Par, it overflows with youthful humour which mercifully steers away from slapstick and vulgarity. The ''scientific'' prank played by Aamir (Rancho) on his senior during ragging sets the tone for the lively engineering college hostel life while giving a glimpse of the character's mental dexterity and manual deftness. He embodies this out-of-the-box inventor/handyman culture - an original and attractive quality for a Bollywood hero. Sharman Joshi’s (Raju's) comic timing is expectedly good, but Madhavan (Farhan) is the pleasant surprise package in his new simple college-boy avatar in contrast to his image as a heartthrob for hip-swaying South Indian heroines. His frozen facial expressions are guffaw-inspiring in the wedding crash scene when they are caught by the lip-curling Boman Irani.

The towering Irani plays the tyrannical college Principal with a priceless scowl perpetually plastered on his face. The film follows the 5 Point Someone storyline loosely, which has predictably given birth to spats between the crew and author Chetan Bhagat. Intellectual property rights aside, the two works of art can’t really be compared since the book challenges academic conformism but focusses more on the romance than on performance pressure and its consequences. Chatur Ramalingam (played by Omi Vaidya) is a great addition to the cast; his inherent slimyness and grovelling invokes your distaste very convincingly. Also, Kareena Kapoor is a different (read more likeable) kind of female lead from the stuffy Neha of the book.

The director Rajkumar Hirani (of Munnabhai fame) takes a bold approach towards certain scenes such as the miserable squalor in Sharman Joshi’s  house. By shooting the house in black and white, followed by seemingly offensive jokes on the poverty of the situation, the otherwise depressing scene takes on a light-hearted, matter-of-fact air. The boyish banter at the end of the scene is a relief – this moment would have been a glycerine freemarket if it had followed regular Bollywood patterns.

And just as you’re smiling at the realism being showed, it’s murdered by an avalanche of tears. The ''last half hour'' has rightly attracted oodles of criticism for the all the melodrama it contains. Aal was not well. Is mass appeal important enough to stretch and twist a story into ridiculous detours and knots? Well, it must be. The film, as it has been said above, is an entertainer first and foremost. But one wonders why audience intelligence must be underestimated every time. Rather than pandering to tearjerker requirements that are totally out of sync with a story’s spirit, a film should aim to raise the bar or change the face of ''entertainment''.

But in conclusion one must praise the shots of the experimental school in Shimla towards the end, which redeem the quality of the story. The inclusion of this scene, depicting oddball mechanical contraptions being used for local indigenous activities such as shearing sheep, gives a sweet and not too unbelievable finishing touch to the philosophy of creative teaching and learning. Another creditable attempt at merging mainstream and social cinema by Hirani and Aamir.