Friday, January 15, 2010

3 Idiots: A Critical Review


“3 Idiots” has hit the screens and is rocking all across the globe. Aamir has done the miracle once again and the movie is bound to break all preceding records. So far so good. The movie has been widely applauded by audience and even by the critics and managed to bag 5 stars in its cart. Most of my friends watched it and acknowledged it as “ultimate”

As far as I am concerned, I think the movie had all the prerequisite masala of a hit movie. It was humorous, it was emotional and above all the message of the movie was loud and clear – “Focus on inculcating and improvising skills rather than following success blindly” and Aamir emphasized this burning issue over and over again.

Unfortunately, I had the pre set image of “5 Point someone” in my mind and perhaps because of that, I found the movie rather disappointing. Let me entail them all in brief:

  1. Movie was more about an extra ordinary, Nobel Prize winning material Rancho rather than the story of 3 usual guys with down to earth possessions. Just like Shahrukh projects himself as God in nearly all his movies and hence is rarely considered a great actor by male audience; Aamir khan too did the same and followed suit. Rancho was humorous (while other 2 weren’t), he was a rare prodigy with tech genius (while other 2 weren’t), he was clear in his goals and approach and expert in wooing (while other 2 weren’t) and the list is long

  1. Friendship is all about equality where there is no need to say sorry or thank you. But here I found that Farhan and Raju were so obliged that they even went to the extent of going naked to express gratitude. We all have seen what happens in engineering colleges and how close friends come with each other, but have we ever gone naked just to say thank you to some of our friend? That scene is a blemish on the definition of friendship. Who sings a song like “udti patang sa tha who, kahan gaya use dhundho”. Each line of this song will make you realize as if Rancho wasn’t Farhan’s friend but Godfather.

  1. The feel of young, innocent, and in this case naughty, romance was missing. Rancho was never interested in love while in original novel he was. So the purity of fresh love that was there in the novel wasn’t there in the movie. Infact the romance depicted in the novel is so realistic.

  1. Novel’s novelty is its inherent rush, rush of a young student studying in IIT. The story in novel never gets lethargic and keeps your mind at toes. While the movie was so much focused on highlighting the God Aamir that that rush was missing and to me, movie was a bit sluggish

  1. Greatest flaw of the movie was that it was too predictable. I knew that the newly born infant would kick and hence breathe only after someone says “All iz well”. I could envisage that Phunsukh Wangdu is Rancho himself. Similarly, Lobo will commit suicide was quite apparent. For all those who have read the novel, perhaps every scene was palpable.
  2. Alterations from the original novel were super boring. Rancho being a fraud and hence once again highlighting Rancho as “poor yet great” was a sort of overdose. The relic-Kalash-being-flushed was another predictable scene. Ladakh school concept was good, but where is the story of engineering life, lives of 3 friends together? Projecting ViruS as a strict teacher is well and good but out of the way eccentric was difficult to digest, hence I failed to co-relate though I hail from the most notorious faculty of this country –Mechanical, ITBHU

  1. The feel of a typical hostel life was missing. How assignments are copied at last night, how students fail to co operate but then collage to share, how a student feels raw and fresh after he leaves his home for the first time and how boys spend days and nights talking over same things over and over again – Girls and Professors. That touch was missing, just by portraying extreme cases of ragging and pissing you cannot aver of having showcased the hostel life. “5 point someone” is definitely better in this regard

I would overlook other flaws like 45 year old playing the role of 18 year old engineering student just by the virtue of makeup. In fact to me, it appeared as if the direction is not up to the mark, finishing touch and polishing was only 80% in spite of expected 100%.

Though I must confess that these views are totally personal and observations made above are my personal right.

4 comments:

Yayaver said...

To each his own cinema... But I have not read the novel and went straight for the film. Few points like friendship and godfather, I agree with you. Yet, I absolutely don’t mind that 44 year old Aamir Khan plays the character of a 18 year old student; I will just proclaim that the 18 year old character is more mature than most 50 year olds in this country; Those who are calling it 'ultimate' have not watched lot of cinema to understand meaning of it. Yes, its good movie and kept on focusing about chasing excellence than success !!!

S J Mayank Srivastav said...

Thank God, you didn't consider it as ultimate

Rahul Singh said...

Achcha review hai! 5 star wala!

Manish said...

Well described the differences. I might 100% agree with what u had to say.
In my review, i have focused on the correct and balanced conveyance of the message of the novel through the art of cinema. On that front i find this movie quite un-fulfiling. I surely overlook the point of cinema as a means of entertainment or even a must point of cinema-making. There are a lot cinema, outside bollywood's creation, which are meant for expanding people's outlook and do not focus on entertainment quotient though they still achieve it hugely. The book FPS deserved on such transformation work, and hirnani has not delivered it good.