Movies have often tried to convey a message to its audiences, be it fictional movies(which consist of the majority of the lot) or biographicals which has seen an upsurge in Bollywood over the recent years. A movie which has tried to convey its message by defying conventional mindset about the education system is 3 Idiots(2009) directed by Rajkumar Hirani starring an ensemble cast and inspired by Chetan Bhagat's novel Five Point Someone.
Plot:
.Farhan Qureshi(R Madhavan), Raju Rastogi(Sharman Joshi) are students studying in the very prestigious Imperial College of Engineering(ICE), where they share a room together. The initial scenes of the movie shows them getting ragged by their seniors, where they happen to meet Rancho alias Ranchhoddas Chanchad(Aamir Khan), who had a different, a rather practical approach to education, in particular to engineering. He shocks all of his classmates by his questions and unique approach, where he begins to get noticed by his friends and the director Dr Viru Sahastrabuddhe(Boman Irani), also known as Virus by the students, whose traditional ideas of teaching go in contrast with Ranchho's mindset about education and learning.
In exams, Ranchho always scores the highest marks, much to the dismay of Farhan and Raju as well to Chatur Ramalingam(Omi Vaidya), a Tamil student who believes in rote learning, only later to lead to a comic disaster leading to his humiliation, where his speech at the Teacher's day event is modified by Ranchho.
Later, Ranchho falls in love with Pia(Kareena Kapoor), Virus' younger daughter who is a medical student. Ranchho keeps mocking Pia about her fiancé Suhas, who according to Ranchho is a dumbhead since he studied Engineering and MBA, but works in a bank.
In the early stages of the film, a student named Joy Lobo(Ali Fazal) is passionate about designing machines, which is not approved by Prof Viru and under the pressure of not being able to graduate, Joy commits suicide.
One night the trio end up getting drunk and in the hope of getting Rancho to profess his love for Pia at Virus' residence, Raju urinates at the entrance wall which enrages Virus and decides to expel Raju, which forces Raju to unsuccessfully commit suicide owing to his family's poor financial condition, which lands him in a coma.
Rancho and Farhan give in their hearts in trying to rescue Raju and whist in the hospital, they bring in Raju's mother who while devastated by her son's accident, tries to revive her son.Raju, on recovering from the accident attends an interview and gets selected for a corporate job.
Virus on knowing the influence of Ranchho on his students, he decides to make the exams papers very difficult, so that specifically the trio cannot pass, but Pia, on knowing her father's plans decides to hand over the duplicate office keys to Rancho.Virus catches the three red handed and expels all of them but fortunately for them at that time, Virus' pregnant elder daughter Mona(Mona Singh) suffers intense labour pain, but unfortunately a severe storm cuts of the electricity supply in the city.Ranchho, on his practical knowledge of engineering decides to use his skill in the delivery of the child with the assistance of Pia. Virus gratefully acknowledges Ranchho as a brilliant student and the three graduate successfully, but Ranchho is never heard of after the graduation ceremony.
Fast forward to ten years in the future i.e the present and Farhan is a successful wildlife photographer, his earnest passion since his college days, something which his father never had approved of. Raju is well settled with his wife and is in a corporate job. The duo meet up with Chatur who is now a vice president in a multinational company, whose present task is a multi million dollar contract with a famous inventor named Phansukh Wangdu.
While en route to find Rancho, they discover something strange.At supposed Rancho's house, many people come to attend his father's funeral.While seeking for Rancho, they come across somebody who introduces himself as Ranchhoddas Shyamaldas Chanchad(Jaaved Jaffery), but does not reveal the truth so easily.Only under pressure tactics by Farhan and Raju does he reveal that Ranchho is supposedly their servant's son, whome they call'Chhote', who under Ranchhodas' father's desire, was sent to ICE to study under the disguise of that name to get a degree, while the real Ranchhodas set off to London to work.As per the deal, after the completion of the course, Chhote had to keep away from ICE and all of his friends.
After discovering that Chhote is in Ladakh, they set out en route and manage in rescuing Pia who is forcibly getting married to Suhas. The trio along with Chatur arrive in Ladakh and find out that Chhote teaches school kids. Little did they realise that Chhote's actual name is Phansukh Wangdu, the great inventor whom Mr Chatur has to strike a multi million dollar deal with.
Direction/Performance:-
Rajkumar Hirani always manages to bring about uniqueness in each of the films he directs, be it the Munnabhai series, PK or 3 idiots.Each of these films convey a strong message to the audiences, In this case, he managed to convey to the masses, mainly ambitious youngsters to follow their dreams and break away the norms of having to do something in accordance with family, societal or peer pressure.
Aamir Khan, as always, prepares himself to get into the skin of each character he portrays, This has been very evident not only in this film but throughout his career, especially in the recent Dangal, where he had to play the character inspired by Mahavir Phogat.In 3 idiots, he successfully plays a young, ambitious, intelligent and fun loving college student who later on becomes a famous inventor.
Kareena Kapoor portrayed a smart & ambitious young woman who falls in love with Rancho, and simultaneously having a somewhat frictional relationship with her father.
R Madhavan and Sharman Joshi too displayed great sincerity in their roles, portraying troubled lives of having to study against their dreams due to family and societal pressure.
Boman Irani, akin to Aamir, fit into the role of Virus with great ease. He would remind any youngster of that typical no nonsense principal/professor who is performance oriented and a strict disciplinarian.
Omi Vaidya as Chatur Ramalingam was a character one would never forget as he managed to strike a mark as the comic, rote learning dimwit who only believes in securing grades or degrees.
Other characters, such as Ali Fazal playing Joy Lobo, Mona Singh as Virus' elder daughter, Parikshit Sahni playing Farhan's father or Rahul Kumar as Manmohan or'Millimeter' as he is fondly called, were good enough.
Music:-
The music of the film released a few week's before the film's official release.'All is Well' featured on the trio, became a chartbuster and is often remembered even to this day. Zoobi doobi displaying the romance between Aamir and Kareena too became a hit.Another popular track which people remember to this day is'Give me some sunshine' featuring Joy Lobo singing in his grief and hopelessness. Other tracks incluse Behti Hawa Sa Tha Who and Jaane Nahin Denge Tujhe.
Sonu Nigam, Shaan, Shreya Ghoshal, Suraj Jagan and Swanand Kirkire lent their voices for the songs.The music was composed by Shantanu Moitra and lyrics penned by Swanand Kirkire.
