3 IDIOTS - The funniest Hindi comedy since Munnabhai

3 IDIOTS is one of the funniest Hindi movies I’ve seen since MUNNABHAI MBBS. So it comes as no surprise to find that it was written and directed by Rajkumar Hirani, the guy behind that smash-hit. 3 IDIOTS also has certain plot similarities to the first MUNNABHAI movie. Once again we find ourselves in an Indian university, with students under pressure from their adoring parents to do well and get a great job. Once again we have an iconoclastic rebel who goes against the faculty head and argues for less learning by rote and more actual education. And once again, there’s a romance between the rebel and the Dean’s daughter. But there the resulting is far more raucous, far more consistently witty, and genuinely laugh-out loud funny.

Aamir Khan plays Rancho, an iconoclastic student who transforms the lives of his two best friends Raja (Sharman Joshi) and Farhan (Madhavan). Together, they are the 3 idiots of the title, who fight financial and social pressure to have pursue their passions. They come up against the tyrannical and uncaring university dean, nicknamed Virus, and played by the typically hilarious, but here more modulated, Boman Irani. Lisp and comical haircut aside, Irani’s Virus is less funny than terrible, because until tragedy strikes his own family, he does not change. The 3 idiots also come up against the university swot, a Ugandan NRI nicknamed Silencer, played with a pitch-perfect East African gujurati accent by Omi Vaidya. Silencer is also a tragic figure, but equally one of the funniest, with a hilarious comic set-piece revolving around a formal speech in front of the education minister which the fluent Hindi 3 idiots have doctored replacing the word “serve” with “screwed”. Silencer is also the best exponent of the movie’s full and up-front exploration of fart jokes! Naturally, this being a Hindi film, there has to be a love interest, and so we have Kareena Kapoor, also superb at the comdy, playing Pia, the dean’s daughter.

The bulk of the movie takes place a decade ago, and sees Rancho befriending the other idiots, confronting the dean and falling in love. The movie’s framing device takes place in the present day, with Raju, Farhan and Silencer trying to track down Rancho after ten years of radio silence.

The perfectionist Aamir Khan, aged 44, undergoes an impressive physical transformation to play Rancho, a university student. He has lost weight, and the combination of baggy clothes, make-up (unfairly – botox?!), posture and physicality make him more convincing in the role than you might imagine. It was even more suprising to see how far this actor, famed for his serious political films, could do pure physical comedy. His acting in the song “Aal eez well” is superb, and genuinely laugh-out-loud funny.

So, 3 IDIOTS is utterly hilarious. But the great thing is that it is also politically provocative. The key argument in the film is that Indian parents are too strict with their kids, picking out their careers for them, and putting too much pressure on them succeed. Worse still, success is measured purely by salary, with which you can buy flashy branded clothes and attract a pretty wife. The price of this pressure is extreme – suicide. Rancho argues that real learning isn’t learning by rote to come first in an exam. And that, rather than trying to come top in an exam, if you “pursue excellence, and success will follow, pants down.” Most of all, if you love engineering, be an engineer. Don’t become a banker in a foreign land. It’s a wonderful ethos and the argument sorely needs to be made. It’s great to see a populist movie taking such a stance.

Of course, with Hindi cinema you have to expect a big dollop of melodrama and implausibility. For instance, the framing device see the “two idiots” go in search of Rancho by driving from Delhi to Shimla via Ladakh – a massive road trip that seemingly happens in a day! And the single most ludicrous set-piece is the scene where Rancho and the students help the dean’s daughter to give birth despite heavy rains, a lack of electricity, and any medical equipment. Just when you think the scene can’t get more schmaltzy and melodramatic, Hirani pushes it one step further, with the movie’s motto, “Aal eez well” playing a key part. It’s ludicrous. But then again, you have to assume that a writer-director who has pastiched Hindi cinema tropes in the song “Zoobi Doobi” knows perfectly well what he’s doing. He’s both pandering to our expectations of what a Bollywood movie should do, and simultaneously sending them up. It takes a very assured director to create a scene that’s both moving and hilarious.

3 IDIOTS was released on Christmas Day 2009.

FANAA - bipolar Bollywood

FANAA is a film that follows the conventions of Bollywood to its own undoing. The first half is a typical sugary romance. Kajol plays a blind tourist called Zooni who falls in love with Aamir Khan's plain-talking tour guide, Rehan. It's a typical Hindi love story complete with songs, dancing and the obligatory rain-soaked love scene. It's all very conventional and even Kajol's innate charm can't rescue piss-poor songs like Des Rangila. Naturally, having fallen in love, Zooni regains her sight miraculously - a jump-the-shark moment if ever there was one.

After the interval, FANAA turns into a completely different film. It turns out that Rehan is actually a terrorist on the run from the police. He abandons Zooni and their unborn child only to resurface years later, by which time the movie has turned into a cross between SOMERSBY and a snow-bound thriller. It's all deeply unedifying and a waste of everyone's time. It's also totally unsurprising that the woman who penned this implausible drivel was also behind the tedious weepy, KABHI ALVIDA NA KEHNA.

If I have to look for a plus side, I guess I could make the dull point that all Bollywood films tends to look fabulous these days. After years of shite production values, the cinematography and special effects are of Hollywood standards. Shame about the content. Director Kunal Kohli is nothing without a good script: his previous hit HUM TUM must have been down to good chemistry between the leads.

FANAA was released in May 2006 and is available on DVD.

RANG DE BASANTI - a noble failure

RANG DE BASANTI is a brave and noble failure. Why brave? Because it is a Bollywood film that eschews materialistic escapism for a substantive discussion of contemporary Indian society. The film focuses on a bunch of University students in Delhi. They are part of the "new India" of middle-class affluence, IIT graduates and swankly jobs in MNCs. Apart from one of the group who is an Indian airforce pilot, the rest regard India as a "shit-hole", riddled by poverty, corruption and unemployment. What is shocking to a western eye is their nihilism: all they want is to graduate and leave the country and in the mean time get pissed and ride around on cool motorcycles. I have no idea whether this attitude really does reflect the thinking of India's metropolitan youth, but if so, it's a sad look-out for India.

This is presumably the thinking of writer-director Rakesh Omprakash Mehra. Into this mix he throws a young Britsh girl called Sue - a documentary-maker who has walked out of her job because she wants to make a film about something other than Gandhi. She goes to Delhi to produce an independent movie about Bhagat Singh - a legendary Indian freedom-fighter who died at the hands of the Raj. Initially she can't engage the Indian kids - they find that Bhagat Singh and his ilk have no relevance to their lives, and while they agree to act in her film it's basically because the gang-leader fancies her. Naturally, this being a three-hour Bollywood epic, being part of the movie awakens the kids political consciousness.

Now, I am all in favour of a Bollywood movie that tackles issues of contemporary Indian life head-on. But I can see why RANG DE BASANTI would ruffle feathers. It seems rather insulting that India's political conscience can only be awakened by an English woman - but perhaps that's what the director was aiming for. After all, the tone of the first hour of the film is rather dismissive of the crass materialism of metro kids.

But the bigger issue with RANG DE BASANTI is not that it advocates political engagement but the precise kind of political engagement that it advocates. In the final hour of the flick it becomes an altogether darker, more violent film, advocating short-circuiting established political systems for direct action of the most violent kind. I found this utterly alienating as a message and as depressing as the nihilism of the first half of the film.

Substance aside, RANG DE BASANTI has other problems. While condemning materialism on the one hand, the movie is photographed like a glossy commercial for a MNC - unsurprising given the director's experience. The actors are largely mis-cast. The English actress (daughter of Fat Pang) playing the English documentary-maker has made a valiant attempt to learn Hindi but has a hopeless accent. Similarly, Aamir Khan (LAGAAN, THE BALLAD OF MANGAL PANDEY) who plays the lead male role, is at least ten years too old for the role, and struggles with his Punjabi accent too.

RANG DE BASANTI was released in January 2006 and is now available on DVD. It is India's official entry for the Best Foreign Film category at the Oscars this year.