Wazz Aal Really Well?

This write-up (not a review) is not going to extol the movie that has been liked by everyone who I have spoken to so far. Even I loved the flick; it deserves all the money and acclaim it has managed to garner so far. But, call me cynical if you want, there are certain things pertaining to 3 Idiots with which I have a problem. This write-up is going to speak about those problems.

Since Bollywood churns up so many absolutely pathetic movies every year, some of them starring actors who charge obscene amounts to ‘act’ in them, we in India go berserk when a good movie hits the theaters. Sorry, I correct myself, a good movie with big stars hits the theaters.

3 Idiots was a movie waiting to be made for a very long time. Nothing much has recently changed in the Indian education system in recent years: JEE is almost as tough and competitive today as it was a decade ago, IIM’s have been dream institutes for generations of students. So, why the movie now? Shouldn’t it have been made years ago? Perhaps, then, Raju Hirani is not an Idiot, he just happens to be smarter than all the idiots who write scripts and make cinema in Bollywood.

Now, permit me to point some problems that I have with certain portions of the movie. The most popular scene of the movie probably is Silencer’s balatkaar speech scene. Last checked, the number of members of the community of the fans of the scene on Facebook had crossed 600. The scene shows Silencer making a fool of himself by declaiming a mugged-up that had been tampered with by Rancho previously and his audience laughing uproariously at him. Now, does the director want us to believe that Silencer was so dumb that he couldn’t even understand that his audience was laughing its lungs out at his speech and was mocking at him? I concur some students are hopeless crammers but it is very difficult for me to believe that a normal adult man can be so silly and stupid that he fails to understand chagrin of the magnitude depicted in the scene.

Before that, we are shown that Rancho (Amir) manages to give a hilarious tit-for-tat to the senior who tries to rag him. After the incident, neither the seniors take any action against him nor do college authorities take any action against the seniors. When did senior students of Indian colleges become so altruistic, decent and non-violent? Also, the absence of any trauma or embarrassment shown by his two friends’ after the incident again smacks of lack of comprehensiveness of the story.

After this incident, we are introduced to the mantra of ‘Aal Izz Well’ and its origin. Rancho tells us that a blind night watchman of his village used to chant it at night to induce a false sense of security in the villagers’ heart. Later on, we come to know that Rancho was a servant of an affluent family in Shimla. When did Shimla become a village, will someone take care to explain to me? And when we are at it, let me also point out that couples never wait for a decade before getting married as is towards the end of the movie.

Barring, perhaps only Dil Dosti Etc., 3 Idiots seems to be the only movie that I can remember of which gives a realistic and un-stereotyped perspective of colleges in India. For a very fresh change, 3 Idiots was without exaggeratedly pigeonholed characters like the Tina of Kuch Kuch Hota Hai, the Lucky of Main Hoon Naa, the Payal of Ishq Vishk and so on. 3 Idiots does deserve a small round of applause for breaking all these stock and unrealistic stereotypes portrayed in almost all campus movies that have been produced by Bollywood so far. A small applause because it surprises me how these exceedingly irritating stereotypes could manage to survive in Hindi movies for so many years. The movie also deserves praise since it focused not on college romance but studies and syllabus, though it would have been better if the protagonists had mentioned which branch of engineering they were pursuing.

The message that the movie primarily gives is that everyone should follow his or her dream and should chalk out one’s career according to one’s interest. The real reason to worry is that many of us in India needed a 3 Idiots to understand this. And not only this, I’m sure, after the movie, many parents, on being approached by their B.Tech-pursuing students to ask them to let them pursue a career in wildlife photography, would have said, ‘Idiot, they show anything in movies. Real life is different. Go and study.’

I am extremely aware of the fact that all this criticism would hardly affect the immense love that everybody in general has for the movie. But, for me, all this makes 3 Idiots only one of the better movies made by Bollywood so far, not the best one for sure. Give me a TZP, RDB or Black anytime!