3 IDIOTS (2009)
SYNOPSIS
Raju and Farhan haven’t seen their college friend Rancho in ten years. After receiving a call from a college nemesis, the two friends drive across the country, dropping everything in their current life, to find the friend they last saw on graduation day. Rancho is the brightest student in class, charming most of his classmates but gaining some enemies in return. Everyone expects him to have the brightest future after graduation. However, he loses contact with his friends right after ceremony and never to be seen again. The movie mixes the present and the past, showing Raju and Farhan’s search for Rancho and the reason he disappeared, and intervening memories from the past from the start of their college education leading to graduation.
RECOMMENDED FOR: Everyone; people who haven’t watched any Bollywood movie. This is a good movie to start.
DO I RECOMMEND IT?
YES, YES, YES. This is my first authentic Bollywood movie and I am impressed, mesmerized, hooked, amazed, etc. Truthfully, I am apprehensive of watching Bollywood movies because I’m not a fan of musicals. But 3 Idiots changed my mind because I found out that musicals can actually be fun and entertaining. The movie runs for 3 hours but you won’t even notice it. Peppered with the right amount of humor, musical numbers, and plot twists, 3 Idiots is one of the best movies I’ve watched this year.
What I really like about 3 Idiots is how it easily manages to convey meaningful lessons between laughs and song numbers. Rancho, Raju, and Farhan’s friendship is awfully heartwarming. They’ve been through a lot (of pranks and a web of problems) but they still end up laughing and having fun at the end of it all. It’s a really good movie to watch when you’re feeling pathetic and bitter about life. You can relate to at least one of the characters and that makes the movie special.
The pacing of the movie is slow enough to allow character development but not too much to be dragging. The characters have a way of growing on you since you see where everyone is coming from. You see Raju and his family, and you know that he’s doing his best in school to take his family out of poverty. Farhan doesn’t excel so well in school and you know it’s because he’s good in something else: photography. Rancho is the liveliest character but you know so little about him. The whole movie is pretty much dedicated on figuring out his enigmatic background. Pia, Rancho’s love interest in the movie, is a good addition to the cast. She’s one of the few people who can argue with Rancho and doesn’t (usually) end up as the sore loser.
The movie starts in the present and creatively unravels snippets from the past. It’s an interesting way to solve a mystery because you already know what will happen in the end but the thrill is in figuring out how it came to that. I can’t really think of any fault of the movie besides the overused phrase, “All is well.” It tends to get a little too corny by the end of the movie, you’ll know what I mean. But besides that, there’s a good mixture of comedy and drama but nothing that will devastate you. It’s a light-hearted film about friends and dreams that anyone will surely like.
