3 Idiots is a 2009 Indian Hindi-language coming-of-age comedy-drama movie directed by Rajkumar Hirani, and also co-written by him with Abhijat Joshi. The movie stars Aamir Khan, R. Madhavan, Sharman Joshi, Kareena Kapoor, Boman Irani and Omi Vaidya. The movie talks about the friendship of three students at an Indian engineering college and is a satire about the social pressures under an Indian education system. The movie is told through equal dramas, one in the present and the other ten years earlier. The movie joined genuine Indian developments made by Remya Jose, Mohammad Idris, Jahangir Painter and Sonam Wangchuk.

Produced by Vidhu Vinod Chopra under the banner Vinod Chopra Films, and based on Chetan Bhagat's novel Five Point Someone: What not to do at IIT!, the movie joined genuine Indian developments made by Remya Jose, Mohammad Idris, Jahangir Painter and Sonam Wangchuk.  The movie released on December 25, 2009 and was a critical and commercial success. It was also the highest-grossing movie in its opening weekend in India, had the highest opening day collections for an Indian movie up until that point and also held the record for the highest net collections in the first week for a Bollywood movie. It additionally got one of only a handful few Indian movies at an opportunity to get successful in East Asian business sectors, for example, China and Japan, at last carrying its overall gross to ₹3.92 billion ($90 million) — it was the highest-grossing Indian movie ever at the time. The movie likewise socially affected perspectives to schooling in India, and also education in other Asian nations, for example, China.

The movie won six Filmfare Awards including Best Film and three National Film Awards including Best Popular Film. Overseas, it won the Grand Prize at Japan's Videoyasan Awards while it was nominated for Best Outstanding Foreign Language Film at the Japan Academy Awards and Best Foreign Film at China's Beijing International Film Festival. In 2012, a Tamil remake of the film was released and it was called Nanban and in 2017, a Mexican remake of the film was released and it was called 3 Idiotas.

Plot 
Right as his flight is about to take off, wildlife photographer Farhan Qureshi receives a phone call from his collegemate Chatur "Silencer" Ramalingam, who informs him that he has got the whereabouts of his long-lost best friend and collegemate Ranchhoddas "Rancho" Shamaldas Chanchad. Farhan's airplane takes off but he fakes a heart attack and creates an emergency landing and escapes from the airport to the house of his other best friend and collegemate Raju Rastogi. The two then rush to the campus of their old college named Imperial College of Engineering and meet Chatur, who reminds them of the bet which they and Rancho had made ten years ago about who will end up more successful in the next ten years, as he boasts to them about his more successful career in the United States of America as the vice-president of Rockledge Corporation, an American conglomerate. Farhan and Raju initially berate him for his act, but calm down once he reveals to them that he has traced Rancho to Shimla. As the three leave for Shimla, Farhan reminisces about their college days.

Over a flashback, it is shown that Farhan has come to stay at the Imperial College of Engineering as his father forced him to pursue engineering. He then befriends his second roommate Raju who, has come from a poor family which has pinned very high hopes on him to get out of poverty. While being ragged by the seniors, they stumble upon the seemingly naive Rancho, who comes from a rich family but has a passion for engineering. Rancho, Raju and Farhan, now good friends, meet their college director Dr. Viru Sahastrabuddhe a.k.a. Virus, whose doctrinal methods of learning contrast with Rancho's carefree love for knowledge, resulting in a tiff between them on their first meeting. One day, when Joy Lobo, a student with a passion for engineering similar to Rancho's, is denied graduation by Virus on grounds of failure to submit his project, he dumps his innovative drone camera, which is picked up by Rancho. After the trio learns of Joy's predicament, Rancho recreates the drone camera. Unfortunately, before he can see his drone camera coming to life, Joy committed suicide. Later, when Rancho insults and embarrasses Virus in front of the other students, holding his approach responsible for Joy's death, he complains to Raju and Farhan's parents via letters. The trio is then confronted by Farhan and Raju's respective parents at their respective houses. Later, the hungry trio gatecrashes a wedding for dinner, whence Rancho bumps into a woman named Pia, advising her to leave her materially obsessive fiancé Suhas, which ends up in a comical demonstration pushing Pia to anger. However, in a twist, she turns out to be Virus' daughter, and Virus confronts the trio after Pia tricks Rancho; it turns out that the wedding is for Pia's elder sister Mona. The following morning, Virus summons Farhan and Raju and tells them to move in with Chatur, but Farhan decides to stay back, while Raju reluctantly decides to go on despite his friends' warning. Seeking to trap Chatur in order to teach Raju a lesson, Rancho and Farhan print Chatur's Teachers' Day speech edited with obscene words when the librarian, Dubey, is distracted by the duo. Following the speech debacle, which still fails to convince Raju, Chatur learns about the prank, only to angrily confront Rancho in a drunken state, when he makes a bet with Rancho about who would be more successful ten years later. After a few days, Rancho manipulates Pia into insulting and briefly dumping Suhas, which angers her. However, he learns that Raju's paralyzed father has suffered a stroke, and a reluctant Pia gives in to his plea for help. Rancho quickly admits him in a hospital by riding him into the hospital premises on Pia's scooter. Raju, who is able to catch up, realises his mistake on hearing that timely intervention saved his father from near death, and reunites with Rancho and Farhan. Pia also understands Rancho's character and falls in love with him. The trio writes exams, but Farhan and Raju are placed last, while discovering, in a shocker, that Rancho has topped, after they see Chatur venting frustration over his second rank.

Back to the present, Farhan, Raju and Chatur reach Shimla and go to the house where Rancho lives. Over there, they are shocked to meet another young man, who identifies himself as the real Ranchoddas Shamaldas Chanchad. Farhan and Raju question Chatur about the Shimla address who reveals to them that he spotted Rancho in a photo taken by his secretary Tracy when she had come to Shimla to meet international scientist Phunsukh Wangdu, a sensational inventor with 400 patents to credit, who he has been trying to sign a deal with ahead of the Japanese rivals. Farhan and Raju then confront and threaten the "imposter" who, in confessing that he is the real Ranchoddas Shamaldas Chanchad, inadvertently reveals to them that the acquaintance they knew was actually one Chhote, the son of the Chanchad family's gardener, who had an immense passion for learning and studying, and was taken in by the family after being orphaned. Ranchhoddas reveals that he would take advantage of Chhote's thirst for knowledge by having him appear as a proxy for his examinations and also have his assignments written by him. Shamaldas instructed Ranchhoddas's school headmaster, who caught the bluff one day, to continue the ruse so that Ranchhoddas would have a degree to his name. Ranchhoddas went to London for four years, while Chhote assumed his identity. Revealing that Shamaldas had struck a deal with Chhote to get him to attend college in return for him severing ties with his batchmates immediately after graduation, he tells them that Chhote misses them a lot. Farhan and Raju, promising to keep the 'Chhote' story a secret, leave with Chatur for Ladakh, where Chhote is apparently working in a school; Chatur is distressingly delighted to discover that "Rancho" is a teacher.

Back in the past, during their final year, Rancho and Pia fall in love and begin a relationship. After Farhan and Raju drunkenly break into Virus's house and pee while Rancho sneaks in to propose to Pia, Virus threatens Raju with rustication the next morning unless he agrees to implicate Rancho in the scandal. Unwilling to either betray his best friend or disappoint his family yet again, a distraught Raju jumps off the window to attempt suicide, and ends up in a coma. The group successfully recovers him over the next two months, after which he attends his placement interview with a newfound confidence and secures a job while Farhan also successfully convinces his father about his passion for wildlife photography and contentment with the job he got with his role model, photographer Andre Istvan, in Hungary. Unable to take the insult any longer, Virus rigs the final examination question paper in order to fail Raju, but Pia obtains duplicate keys to her father's office and helps Rancho and Farhan break into the office to steal the question paper.

Farhan and Raju, again in the present, suddenly remember Pia, and learn that she is getting married in Manali. Deciding to pick her up anyway, they gag Chatur, who is instead intending to catch up with Phunsukh Wangdu, and head straight to Manali. Once the duo is able to sneak in, Farhan splits to reunite with Pia, while Raju substitutes himself for a housekeeper to ruin the groom's wedding suit in order to hold back Suhas. Although Pia initially refuses to break off the marriage, believing Suhas is a changed man who has abandoned his material obsession, she is surprised to hear Suhas screaming about his expensive suit, leading Farhan to realize that his plan has worked. Raju escapes in the heat of the moment with the suit, claiming to Suhas that he will return it in mint condition, but instead proceeds to fill in as the groom. An initially worried Pia, as she finds this out, grows concerned over public reaction to the ruse, causing Raju to reveal himself and confront her about her love for Rancho even as Suhas turns up in a gown. As she spots Farhan at the entrance, with the car doors opened, Pia breaks free from the bond and elopes with the duo, as the story rolls again into a flashback where Rancho and Farhan successfully retrieved the question paper for Raju.

Despite Raju refusing to use the paper, Virus discovers what happened and has the three rusticated in the middle of the night; his initial anger soon turns into disappointment, however, when Pia admits her role in the events, confronting both him and Mona over the suicidal demise of Virus' elder son, which was misinterpreted by Virus as an accident, simply because his passion for literature and desire to be a writer was overruled by Virus, who was insistent on his son becoming an engineer. As the trio is leaving the institute in the middle of heavy rainstorms, Mona goes into labor no later after Pia walks out of the house, and Rancho, unable to get her to the hospital, enlists the help of Pia on a webcam and other students in, successfully conducting the delivery with a makeshift ventouse. Realizing the fault in his ways and how genius Rancho is, Virus lets the trio stay for writing exams and gifts Rancho a very rare Space Pen. Rancho tops the university in the final year, but abruptly leaves the graduation ceremony without informing anyone and has never been heard of again.

Back to the present, Farhan, Raju, Pia and Chatur finally travel to the school in Ladakh, where, after unbounding Chatur, they are finally reunited with Rancho just as Chatur, who catches up with the trio, condescendingly insults Rancho's apparent status as a schoolmaster and has him sign a “Declaration of Defeat” and walks away in supposed victory. When Pia asks Rancho his real name, he reveals himself to be Phunsukh Wangdu and promptly calls off the deal with Chatur, to his shock. Wangdu, Pia, Farhan and Raju run away laughing while a humiliated Chatur chases after them.

Cast 
 Aamir Khan as Ranchoddas "Rancho" Shamaldas Chanchad / Chhote / Phunsukh Wangdu
 R. Madhavan as Farhan Qureshi
 Sharman Joshi as Raju Rastogi
 Omi Vaidya as Chatur Ramalingam, a Ugandan-Indian educated in Tamil-speaking Pondicherry who has little knowledge of Hindi, and Rancho's rival whose habit of being flatulent due to the consumption of certain pills claimed to enhance his memorization earns him the nickname "Silencer"; in the present story, he is vice-president of Rockledge Corporation who discovers his success being overshadowed by Phunsukh Wangdu a.k.a. Rancho at the end of the film.
 Kareena Kapoor as Pia Sahastrabuddhe
 Boman Irani as Dr. Viru "Virus" Sahastrabuddhe
 Omi Vaidya as Chatur Ramalingam
 Rahul Kumar as Manmohan a.k.a. Millimetre
 Dushyant Wagh as adult Manmohan a.k.a. Centimetre
 Mona Singh as Mona Sahastrabuddhe
 Parikshit Sahni as Mr. Qureshi
 Farida Dadi as Mrs. Qureshi
 Amardeep Jha as Mrs. Rastogi
 Mukund Bhatt as Mr. Rastogi
 Rajendra Patwardhan as Govind
 Javed Jaffrey as the real Ranchoddas Shamaldas Chanchad. (Cameo appearance)
 Arun Bali as Shamaldas Chanchad (Cameo appearance)
 Ali Fazal as Joy Lobo (Cameo appearance)
 Akhil Mishra as Librarian Dubey.
 Rohitash Gaud as (real) Ranchoddas's servant.
 Achyut Potdar as Machine Class Professor
 Madhav Vaze as Mr. Lobo, Joy Lobo's father.
 Olivier Sanjay Lafont as Suhas Tandon
 Jayant Kripalani
 Atul Tiwari as R.D. Tripathi
 Rajeev Ravindranathan as ragging senior student.
 Supriya Shukla as doctor with Pia.

References 

2000s buddy movies
2000s comedy-drama movies
2009 comedy movies
2009 drama movies
Buddy movies
Education in India
English-language movies
Hindi-language movies
Indian movies
Movies about death
Movies based on books
Movies set in universities and colleges
Nonlinear narrative movies
Satirical movies
Urdu-language movies