my take: at the least, you can't say you don't get a full-course meal of movies in one LARGE one

Rating: 6/10 (29 February 2016)

Unlike many who have commented here in the years since 3 Idiots was released in India and throughout the world, I am not well-versed with Bollywood movies - indeed, far as I can tell from his filmography, this may be my first Aamir Khan movie - so my take on this experience may be different from others. It's not even that I can't get into a cinematic whirlwind like this, as other filmmakers in other countries will (sometimes) go for BIG emotions and BIG turns like this one does (Love Exposure was something that came to mind during this, of all things). So if you read what I'm about to say and think I'm full of it or don't know what I'm talking about it, well, the latter may be about right, but I can still share my honest thoughts much as they are. And, as far as the most general impression, overall, this isn't too bad. Is it very good though, or as bad as certain IMDb message board posters might say since its ascension to the top 250 films of all time?
In short, 3 Idiots is a full course meal of a movie, and it has so many types and moods of movie stuffed into one, like a Turducken or something: it's a broad college comedy, an Alvin and the Chipmunks farce (think about it, with Khan's Rancho as Alvin and the other two idiots variations of Simon and Theodore, sort of, plus the Chatur character as the 4th wheel), a soap opera about strict fathers and their children, a tragic tale about suicide meant to highlight a very real problem in Indian society, and of course for Bollywood a musical, not to mention a kind of moral story of what it means to be a teacher or a student and how to not be so uptight (another subtitle for this movie could be "The System, They Just Don't Understand!").
It's even other things I'm sure, and the tones fluctuate and alter on a dime from one to the next. Case in point, there's a little more than mid-way through the film a very serious turn in the plot; nevermind how exactly it gets there, suffice it to say it's due to some late-night antics from Rancho with pals Raju and Farhan, with Raju most drunk the next morning in class and being forced to decide whether to be expelled or put it all on Rancho. Raju decides to jump out the window, though he doesn't die and he subsequently gets rushed to the hospital. Cue up the sad but (it can't be anything else) supremely heart-felt song that plays over as he is brought to stable condition. Then it becomes a rather crazy comedy of 'how do we wake up Raju' sequence as he is stuck in his, uh, comatose-sort of state and Rancho keeps saying wilder and wackier things to get Raju to wake up. And yet as broad as this is it's still serious... sort of.
A lot of this happens throughout 3 Idiots; for a stretch of time the movie will take on something like a frat-house comedy (that's actually how the film seems like it will take shape early on, "initiation" sequence with butt-branding included!) but then it's (duh) also a romance with the headmaster/principal's daughter, Pia (Kapoor, pretty but also a very good actress) and Rancho since he not only is the cool/suave prankster but he also spots the phonies who try to have her hand as a significant other. But then it's also about Raju's sad (in black and white no less!) home life, and then it's also about how to function properly in an academic environment with Rancho sometimes like a, uh, RP McMurphy in Cuckoo's Nest turning the system upside down with the headmaster as the one-note headmaster. And then it gets into a musical number about things like "All is Well", which gets finished off by someone jumping off a ledge and to their death, which makes it uh... sad again, as it cuts to the pouring rain at a funeral.
This may be de rigeur for those who are regulars for Bollywood cinema - for me, it was at times a startling experience, sometimes akin to getting whiplash on a roller-coaster. This is not to say it made the experience intolerable, however. It was surely made as a prestige/high-mainstream comedy/drama/musical-et-al, and it's the kind of movie that will have high-powered, super-slick musical set pieces (not quite as many as I expected, to be fair, and those that are here do stand out well and are the highlights of the movie aside from Khan's performance), and then for the regular musical score it will be some of the goofiest notes I've ever heard outside of a Disney channel show. And for as BIG as the actors go for this material - perhaps, you could argue, they don't have much of a choice - there are moments where there's something close to not subtlety but measured stuff; when Raju confronts his parents with what he actually wants to do with his life, it's a legitimately strong dramatic scene that pulls on the heartstrings just enough.
In other words, it's probably not what will be the *best* Bollywood movie - some may put it high up there, and that's their prerogative - but if you are new to this style of movie-making (and I don't mean Slumdog Millionaire for the laymans that's basically Bollywood crossed with Danny Boyle), it's a good place to start. It's sometimes quite funny, and sometimes quite harrowing with its drama, and often it's much too much with the emotional manipulation (that delivery scene, my God). It is what it is.