3 Idiots (Rajkumar Hirani, 2009)
A friend insisted I watch this, and so I did. I had no idea it was as popular as it is (#91 in the
IMDb Top 250, at the moment). That's ... surprising. roujin sums up a few of the movie's problems with appealing disgust:
Three hours of cliche. Sigh. Seriously, every single thing you expect to happen does happen. Every single plot strand gets tied up in just about the most predictable way. Every single time. Blergh.
Heh, indeedy. My reaction to the film's predictability wasn't as negative, though. Cliche can be pleasantly satisfying sometimes, and
3 Idiots is nothing if not pleasant — insistently so — which is perhaps ill-advised in a film that attempts to engage seriously with the issue of suicide. I honestly couldn't deal with the movie's visual aesthetic. It's like getting super high and watching ABC Family channel for three days straight. It's all too sunny, with the lighting scheme of a JC Penny commercial.
an adolescent, frat house sense of humor
Bondo's review finds the above problematic for just the first fifteen minutes of the film, mainly, but for me it was an issue throughout. There's a weird fixation on "potty" humor in the most literal sense, with probably a dozen different shots of characters pissing and another four shots of characters sitting on the toilet. I probably should have put "humor" in quotes, too, since little if any comedy emanates from these images. The film isn't even trying to be funny in some instances; it just seems genuinely fascinated by the expulsion of waste from the human body — or just by the dropping of trousers in general.
he was an aloof genius that I could immediately relate to
Nice humblebrag, by the way.
Aamir Khan has the most appealing star role here — pretty much playing a guardian angel in human form — but it was actually Sharman Joshi who made the bigger impression on me. His interview scene (pictured above) is the pinnacle of the film's satisfying cliches.
The present-day story makes no sense, by the way, but who cares, I guess.
Grade: C+
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