Genius Idiots

Rating: 7/10 (7 January 2010)

As I was approaching the end of the movie, I wished I had a scissor to clip off the last 45 minutes or so from the reel, so that I could leave the movie with a positive note. I fail to understand why would the film maker after delivering successfully the definitive message of "Follow your heart, not the crowd", try to show some impractical happenstance of 'vacuum-cleaner delivering a baby' or 'fresh-born-baby responding to Aal-is-well zingle' or 'a runaway bride'. Is it just to cater to the Indian audiences who could only settle for their heroes nothing less than supermen and always believe that miracles do happen in ordinary circumstances? This attitude of ours of seeing geniuses in our heroes had earlier given us before heroes who can sing like Kishore Kumar, fight like Dara Singh and dance like Michael Jackson simultaneously. Now our sensible directors settle only for heroes who can make a model of helicopter, top the class without studying, woo the professor's beautiful daughter, and .....hold your breathe....deliver a baby on a pool table.
I don't agree that the movie has ridiculed that much the professors or the educational system. Quite obviously, all that were shown, were clearly for fun. In my engineering career I had never seen a single professor emphasizing in the lectures more on 'bookish definition' than 'understanding'. I don't also believe that a single professor of mechanical engineering would encourage his student to score high grades so that he could get job in an IT firm.
Having said all that, I must admit that the director Mr Rajkumar Hirani knows how to move his audiences. With his theme of "Niceties above rest", he has always given movies that we can cherish and sometimes show to others to justify our actions (I doubt anyone would actually change his way after seeing any movie). One thing I have noticed that Aamir Khan is always good at these preachy-roles where he is smarter than the rest of the folks on screen and delivers his explanations of your-way-is-wrong-and-my-way-is-divine. Don't get me wrong. He is still my favourite actor and in this movie he has done really well to pass for 20 year old engineering genius. Honestly I have not seen a single movie where Boman Irani has done even an average job. He is excellent as always. From the remaining cast my favourite would be the guy who has played the geek. Music was good especially the 'Behti Hawa sa tha woh' song.
I can understand why the Indian youth love this movie. It is the same reason for why people love Five Point Someone on which the movie is based. The 'I- can -so- relate- to- the- story- and- when- I-watched- it-I- relived-my- college -days' argument. I won't rate the movie Highly though I would consider it as a good one-time-watch.
(Originally posted @ weirdo-on-movies.blogspot.com)