This one was added to our list on the strength of PK, a film that both of us liked immensely. It was made by the same production team, meaning it was directed by Rajkumar Hirani and stars Aamir Khan. Khan’s character here is even similar to the one he would later play in PK and 3 Idiots was also a huge commercial success. It broke box office record in its day though I’m not sure that this means much since it seems that a new record is set every year. Probably this is attributable to the fact that India’s economy is growing so quickly now and so films get bigger and bigger every year. Unfortunately while 3 Idiots is entertaining enough, it’s nowhere as good or even as polished as PK.

The titular idiots are three friends at the Imperial College of Engineering. Their leader is Rancho, a genius who nonetheless infuriates the director of the college for his habit of defying the usual conventions and rules. While everyone else is cramming their brains with rote learning, Rancho argues in favor of learning for the sake of learning and impresses his friends with his creativity and wisdom. His rival is Chatur, a student who believes that success comes from following the rules and hungers only for the wealth and prestige that engineering can bring him. Much of the screen time is devoted to the group’s hijinks as they either upstage Chatur or mock the college’s director, whom they mockingly call Virus. To no one’s great surprise, Rancho eventually wins over everyone, including even the director’s classy daughter and of course teaches valuable life lessons to his friends.

3 Idiots feels like it was patterned after American college comedies. Given how awful those generally are, this is not a good thing. This means that they generally act like assholes and get away with it because they’re heroes rebelling against the stodgy establishment. In one scene, they even get drunk and go prank the college director’s residence. This isn’t to say that the jokes are unfunny. Indeed some of the gags are hilarious but they’re also very crass. Worse, I feel guilty at laughing at some of them. Chatur is the frequent target of the gang’s pranks which the film tries to justify by portraying him as a pompous blowhard. In the story, they use the fact that Chatur was born in Uganda to explain how his Hindi is less than perfect and use this as a source of jokes. This feels too much like punching down. However bad he is, Chatur is just one guy while there are three of them in the gang, making it sometimes seem as if they are constantly bullying Chatur.

Like PK, 3 Idiots tries to impart a moral sermon. Unfortunately while religion in PK was a caricature of the real thing, there was still enough of a grain of truth in it to make it feel convincing. Combine that with the frisson of thrill from undermining something that is still very much taboo, this make PK extraordinary. 3 Idiots tries to rail against the culture of rote learning and studying only to chase after wealth and success. While this holds some promise and the Asian culture of learning through memorization is certainly deserving of mocking, the execution here falls flat. Rancho’s advice that success comes naturally to people who seek learning for its own sake feels simplistic and unconvincingly idealistic. It also comes across as haughty and patronizing as Rancho breezes through every exam and earns the top score in class without seeming to need to study or work hard since he’s such a natural genius. In fact, the whole dynamic of the three friends is all wrong. Good friends shouldn’t need to prostate themselves to their gang leader and call him God.

I did find 3 Idiots interesting in other ways. Apparently students being driven to suicide due to academic pressure must be very common in India because there are multiple instances of it in this film. They strike quite a discordant note in what is otherwise a very light film. I also quite liked how the film portrayed Raju’s much poorer family as if they were time travelling back to an earlier India but I was disappointed that they never really grappled with the huge disparity in wealth between their different families. Still while this film has its moments, it’s ultimately too dumb, too simple and even too long to be worth watching. Aamir Khan is quite a character though and he feels almost like an Indian version of Stephen Chow to me. No wonder Chow’s production company is apparently interested in remaking this!