3 Idiots is probably one of the better films of the
year. Or even the past few years. And it’s very rare to have engineers as
protagonists. You usually have cops, robber, lawyers and businessmen. Doctors,
sometimes. When you do have the odd engineer as a character, he’s usually
building a bridge. Or, playing solitaire on his computer. Not seen a she yet.
But somehow the film didn’t quite click for me. 2
primary reasons for that were
- Stale jokes. Lots of lifts from e-mail forwards and so on.
- A keyhole view of life in an engineering college, that leaves out more than it reveals. This is a flaw it carries from Chetan Bhagat’s ‘Five Point Someone’, which, despite all protestations to the contrary by the Hirani & Co, the movie is a not-so-loose adaptation of.
- Okay there’s no #3. At least not a big #3. Logical flaws in a comedy are chalta hai for me. Exam results are usually published in order of roll-no, making it easier to find your result. And why use Michael Jackson instead of Lata Mangeshkar in the subtitles? And if they were so eager to get hold of him, so as to get a plane to turn around, or rush out without pants; why didn’t the 2 idiots go to Simla to look for Rancho in the 10 years after graduation?? 4 years of sharing a room, and they didn’t know his hometown? No, because they were IDIOTS! Flaw cleared. And… ok, stopped.
Anyway, coming back to the other 2 gripes. The gags were
funny, and had the audience in splits. But quite a lot of them were recycled
jokes that have been floating around on the internet for over a decade. Some
even more. And when you know the punch-line in advance, the laughs just don’t
flow. To cite a few (Warning – Links do not contain
spoilers, but do point to the source of some of the jokes. So maybe watch the
movie 1st, if you were planning to? You’ll laugh more that way)
- The NASA Space
Pen which you can order for $25 or thereabouts, the tourist
photographer, the
student in the exam hall, and the old as an engine yarn on how to start an
induction motor.
Spoiler Alert. Whole story on the next
link. Watch the movie (if you were planning to) before clicking this. This guy describes it way better than I have.
The other problem is something I also had with the novel.
Engineering college is not just about cramming, boring lectures and exams
(though all those do happen). They are probably less than 10% of what the 4
years were. Reading Five Point, I felt a bit sorry that the writer’s strongest
memories were about exams and grades. There’s also arts fests, sports &
games (They did show a ping-pong table in the movie. Admitted.), elections, bunking classes, movies – lots of them, hanging out, parties,
treats, birthdays, labs,
lab vivas (always a font for new & original jokes), projects, RGing….. As the 10
year old T-shirt that I continue to wear often, says on its back “The Best Daze
of our Lives.”
One difference between the movie and the book (besides
the obvious extension of story into Ladakh and chutney), is that Five Point was
more about how, until then, bright overachieving students suddenly found themselves
completely out of depth, and struggled to stay afloat. And then tried crazy
things to survive. I could relate to that. Having stopped achieved anything of
significance after KG, I did not have any adjustment problems. Was happy to just
pass. But a lot of friends did manage to reach college, before realizing that
they cannot be class topper forever. Or that even IITians flunk papers.
‘Idiots’ however went into preachy territory about
flawed education systems. And suicides. And parental pressure. Without really
giving any solutions to all this – other than a utopia close to the Chinese
border. Heck, if we had tried ‘senti’ with our parents to let us follow our
dreams, we would have got back a dosage 10 x stronger.
Overall, more than the second-hand jokes, I think I was
more turned off by the misrepresentation of college life. Ali Haider said it better
in 3 minutes than the movie in 3 hours. To me, 3 Idiots are to engineering colleges,
what Slumdog Millionaire was to India
