I felt like an Idiot…..

……after watching 3 Idiots!! 

No, seriously, I mean it. 

Hold on, hold on. Dont start throwing the jootas and chappals yet . Hear me out !! 

It was a Raju Hirani movie. The one of Munnabhai fame. 

I had high expectations. 

It starred Aamir Khan. My HERO!! 

I had higher expectations. 

It starred Madhavan. (Does anyone remember Ashley from Banegi Apni Baat? I was lost at the first sighting of those bunny teeth!!) 

I was, expectedly, raring to watch this movie. 

And I did. 

Wish I hadn’t. Under all the brouhaha over its being the highest grossing movie of the decade(really!!), I had this urgent need to voice my dissent. And why not?! The movie challenged my intelligence, treated me like an imbecile, whacked  me on the head with its ‘message’, all the while covering it up with sugar-coated preaching. 

Impossible to digest. 

I’ve been trying to prepare a list of what actually irked me to no end, and finally, I’ve mustered the courage to put it up here (at the risk of being treated to rotten tomatoes going ‘SPLAT’ on my face!!)

Anyhow.

1) The leads . Check them out. You’ll know what I mean!! 

Idiots, ALL of them!!

Balding Sharman.Check. 

Wrinkled Aamir. Check. 

Flabby Madhavan.Check. 

Why couldn’t I have the pleasure of watching a regular 20-year old play the lead role? Why , Mr. Hirani?? You’d rather pay up for Aamir’s steep rates than to invest in finding good newbies for the role? Do we really lack talent that bad?? The bags under Aamir’s eyes can hold small change in them!! 

The same applies to Sharman as well as Madhavan. 

The movie starts with freshers joining an Engineering college. And we all know that people apply for engineering after their 12th standard boards. That makes the students 17-18 years old at the time of joining and 21-22 at the time of graduation. 

At no point of time in the movie, could I relate to these three as “Students”!! 

2) Boman Irani. WHY??? Aren’t you SICK to DEATH of watching him play the blubbering “Principal” yet again?? Only this time, he gets to wear a curly wig and talk with a lisp. Method acting, anyone?

3) Premise. Raju and Farhan are looking for their friend Rancho for the last 10 years. Why couldn’t they have approached the Principal (with whom they had better relations towards the end) and requested Rancho’s address?? Wouldn’t it be in the student’s personal records?  After all, wasn’t Rancho’s father a multi-millionaire?? He would be well known. 

What took them so long??

4) The suicides. Aaahhh!! What do we have here?? A Principal confidently telling a student’s father  that his ward is not going to graduate. Student commits suicide. No action taken against the Principal. 

A student being asked to make a choice between getting rusticated and implicating his friend. Student commits suicide. No, make that, jumps from the Principal’s office, while the Principal is still in there!! 

Any action against the Principal?? None. 

I wonder what kind of a**h**** sit on that college’s board!!

5) Doctor doctor!! 

Tell me people, am I wrong in assuming that Kareena Kapoor’s role was that of a SUPER DOCTOR in the guise of a simpering maiden?! So not only is she the fountain of knowledge in Neurology, she’s also the resident gynaec, spouting delivery techniques using a web cam! 

The whole of Delhi has only ONE doctor available, and her name is Pia S.  

Save me God!!

6) Suhas. 

Ok, so this guy was called a price-tag. Agreed. Pia dumps him. Understood. 

But what wasn’t clear was that WHY did he wait for 10 years to marry Pia?? Don’t people move on in life?? Couldn’t they have shown Pia getting married to someone else?? Would it have made a difference?? 

It almost made me pity the poor guy. He seemed more genuine in his affections than Rancho.

7) Ragging. I haven’t understood the director’s fascination for ragging. And in the same manner too !! So we had freshers catwalking in their underwear in Munnabhai and here we have freshers slapping their bottoms in their underwear. Is this the ONLY form of ragging you are aware of, Mr. Hirani? 

And oh, did you know ragging is considered as a punishable offence??

8 ) Preach-a-holic. Thats what Aamir has become. The TZP bug had bitten him hard. The venom still flows in his veins. What other excuse could there be, for him to spout gyan at the drop of a hat?!!! 

Student’s funeral, give bhashan to the Principal. 

In the classroom, give bhashan to the lecturer. 

At the wedding/mall, give bhashan to the lady-love. 

At drunk get-togethers, give bhashan to friends. 

Its a wonder everyone didn’t conspire to strangle him everytime he opened his mouth. 

But behind the bhashan to the characters on screen, was the ‘subtle’(?) gyan being dispered to the public at large. First fifteen minutes into the movie, we come to know of the purpose of the film. Fifteen minutes later, we are told again. Another fifteen minutes pass by and once again, we are made aware. After interspersing the gyan throughout, the message is conveyed once again, just before the end credits roll. 

Thunk, thunk, thunk.  

Thats me banging my head against the wall.

You see, Mr. Hirani, I got the message within the first 15 minutes. The worst of the “Duh”s would have got it at 30. But you weren’t convinced .

The Agony of it all .

9) If I’m not wrong, the college was a co-ed, right? It had girls sprinkled across the campus. 

Isn’t it considered indecent to bathe in public when women are around? Why no action was taken against Rancho when he bathes with a water hose? 

Oh, I get it.  Its acceptable, because he’s a guy!!!  Right. 

What if a girl had tried doing that stunt in college? 

Double standards??

10) Mona. Pia’s sister. She gets married, goes into labour. Nowhere in the entire film does she EVER mention her husband. Even at the crucial time of her delivery, no one bothers to inform the father-to-be. In fact, they don’t even  call him after the kid is born!! 

I mean, C’mon!!! Isn’t the baby’s father the first person a woman thinks about after she delivers?? The first person she craves to give the news to? 

The least they could have done was shown Mona grabbing a cell phone to make that all-important call!!! 

Anyhow, I seem to be ranting here, which is not the entire purpose. 

It was a movie, funny at times, but irritating at others. The only person watchable, was Omi Vaidya, as Chatur. 

I wrote about him here before. 

I’m not sure of the postive impact of the film (except for the moolah it has garnered for the people involved with it), but the negatives loom large. 

There have been a spate of suicides recently. Or maybe, the media is highlighting these in the wake of the movie. 

Whatever the case, I personally feel that Raju Hirani could have done a much better job. There was so much potential here. 

Alas, it was all lost the minute Aamir gave his, “am-a-cute-youngster-with-stars-in-my-eyes” smile. 

There’s a limit to which we can be fooled.  Didn’t expect you to do this to us, Mr.Hirani