student reliaty
this was the first time that a movie about college was not about cool clothes, hot chicks, fast cars and dance fests. Instead the focus was on pres...read more
this was the first time that a movie about college was not about cool clothes, hot chicks, fast cars and dance fests. Instead the focus was on pressure, fear of failure, coping with family and authority and most importantly the struggle between who others want you to be and who you want to be yourself. A struggle I myself experienced since I went to engineering school, like one of the protagonists, not because I had a love for engineering (I wanted to be a novelist/journalist) but because it guaranteed me the most secure future.When one of the characters unwittingly reads a speech remixed without his knowledge (watch the movie to understand what I am saying), I laughed aloud because it reminded me of how I would take SFI/DSF (college political parties) pamphlets and then read them out in class after modifying their passionate rhetoric with a few apposite words replaced or inserted, much to the merriment of the class.Several scenes and plot-points reminded me of things that I personally experienced in college and in high school (my high school being a far more competitive and stressful place than my college, where your worth at least in front of the teachers was determined by how many marks you got).I could see a friend I knew in the character of the ultra-competitive Chatur, and the engineer by nature Rancho (Aamir Khan) and saw bits of myself in Farhan(Madhavan) and Raju (Sharman Joshi) . And when in a very astute observations on human nature, a character says that what hurts more than seeing a friend fail is to see a friend succeed, I just could not help but chuckle in agreement at the genuineness of that confession.The credit for why Three Idiots works must go primarily to Rajkumar Hirani and to the very intelligent and equally funny script with several laugh-out loud moments that kept me continously engaged and invested in the fate of the characters. The technical work is top-notch and some of the camera-work breathtaking. Performance-wise Madhavan, Sharman Joshi and Aamir Khan are winners none less than the other, performances doubly creditable because they dont really look like college students any more (My wife would disagree of courseaccording to her there wouldnt be many college students who look as cute as Aamir Khan).Not that Three Idiots is without its failings. For one, the love-story disturbed the marvelous chemistry between the three friends as I felt turning off as soon as Kareena came on the screen waiting for the three idiots to come together again. More importantly, there were several places where the humor was forced and heavy-handed often coming dangerously close to Johnny Lever territory especially the cartoonish Chatur the Silencer and Boman Iranis Munnaibhai MBBS-redux stern authoritarian act. Not that these characters were not interesting or out-of-place or unrealistic but sometimes they just so much overdid their character traits that they became caricatures rather than human beings.But then these are minor jars when something strikes home as beautifully as Three Idiots causing that one thing film-makers and novelists strive fora direct critical hit on the heart.
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