My Intro to Bollywood: Comedy, Musical, Melodrama in One

Rating: 8/10 (14 August 2011)

I watched "3 Idiots" upon the recommendation of my cousin. I believe this is the first complete Bollywood film I have seen.
"3 Idiots" is a film that goes from the present time, to flashbacks of the lead characters' college days in engineering school. Pals Raju (Sharman Joshi) and Fahran (Madhavan) are looking for their best friend Rancho (Aamir Khan) with whom they have lost contact since graduation. Amidst the juvenile school jokes and musical scenes in bathrooms, the story is sending a serious message that learning is more than just rote memorization. Life is about following your own dreams. It also tells us not to face life with fear, overly relying on religion and charms.
There are so many over-the-top scenes in this film which runs more than 2 and a half hours! There was a long scene about a speech where the word "served" was switched with something considerably more vulgar. Funny but went on too long. This may be funnier for people who speak Hindi than those of us who rely on translation. There was a very long scene about a storm, a brownout and someone giving birth. Dramatic but again overstretched and unbelievable. There was also an unexpected sequence about suicide that did not sit well with me in this supposed comedy.
I personally liked the simpler poignant scenes that deliver a bigger punch, like the scene with the Prof. Virus and the pen, the scene with Fahran and his dad, the final revelation scene at the end. There were also some nice scenes with Rancho and the young doctor Pia about her fiancé who seemed to be more concerned about how expensive things were, than about her.
"3 Idiots" is generally fun to watch, except when the jokes became too toilet or too mean for comfort. There was a lot of suspension of disbelief at the time sequences of a lot of what happened, sometimes not too logical. I could not believe that the actor who played Rancho, Aamir Khan, was actually already in his mid-40s, and yet there he was still credibly playing a college student. Overall though, I did enjoy this, my introduction to Bollywood film. Time to discover more about movies from this part of the world.