3
Idiots is
a Bollywood comedy about three classmates at a prestigious
engineering college. It's also a lot of fun. Madhavan (left, above) is the
would-be amateur photographer taking the safe path of an engineering
degree instead of following his passion. Sharman Joshi (right) lives in
fear: fear of failure, fear of letting down his family, fear in
general. Aamir Khan (center) is basically the Buddha, a brilliant visionary who leads his friends (and the beautiful Karina Kapoor, daughter of the hated Dean, Boman Irana) through four years of hijinks,
exams, sticking it to The Man, and enlightenment.
This is a Bollywood movie, so it's two hours and 44 minutes long and
has five or six acts. In addition to laughs, it offers lavish
musical numbers, an impressive flood sequence, pathos, and heaps of
beautiful Indian scenery. It's performed and scored broadly, with
literal bells and whistles underlying the gags and one-liners, plenty
of eye rolling, and never so much as a hint that all this stuff could
possibly be happening in the real world.
Perhaps its best feature, however, is its sense of goodwill. Here's
a movie that'll try just about anything in the name of entertainment,
and it tries so gosh-darned hard that we in the audience can't help
but tap our feet, chuckle along, and even shed a tear or two. Just
thinking about it makes me feel like all is well, and it's hard to ask for much
more than that.
