Sunday, January 24, 2010

Things that I didn't understand about '3 Idiots'.

By now everyone must have seen the Amir Khan starrer '3 Idiots'. I have always admired Amir Khan as an actor and liked Rajkumar Hirani's earlier movies that showcased his brilliant movie-making skills. His recent release left a lot to be desired. I know that a Hindi movie is all about the feel good factor but the relevance of reason, logic and twisted truth was very unnerving. The cinematic liberties were strectched too far. Here are some critical points:

1) The vacuum tube baby scene is incredulous and practically possible;
2) The peeing, short circuit : This is one law of physics that rarely works in practice. Although salty urine is a great conductor of electricity, the current Rancho sourced from a bulb was only a few amperes.

Also, the senior shown getting the shock of his life was wearing footwear (not metal ones, I guess) that would have broken the piddling circuit anways. Also, pee usually flows out as disconnected droplets, rather than a continous stream. Basically, an impossible circuit line, which wouldn’t allow current flow.

It has been scientifically proven and tested in the Mythbusters TV show that doing it even on such a high voltage source of power as the third line of a subway train proves ineffective.

3) Joy’s final year project: The helicopter that didn’t fly: Are you kidding me! You get remote controlled helicopters everywhere! I have seen them as a kid. You get Do-it-yourself kits to make planes like that now. It would’ve been a great engineering project had the characters been studying during 1920s.

4) NASA had developed space pens( P Fisher-inventor) in the 40s and are still prefered over pencils. Pencil tips break easily and the carbon tip could float in the air and get into astronauts’ eyes. Minor irritant, but not aboard a space shuttle.

5) Farhan at the start of the movie in his voiceover says that he was born in 1978. Assuming that all the 3 characters were good students and would have passed through all classes without failing any, they would be in their engineering college from the years 1997-2001 or 1996-2000.. but certainly not beyond 2004.

So, during the years where broadband as a concept wasn’t even available in India and all of us still are at the mercy of the cable operators, how did they manage to have Airtel Mobile broadband through USB which came only in 2008-09 and how did manage the use of Reliance Big TV ??

6) ‘Dad Office’ calling on mobile in 2000: Highly unlikely!!! considering mobiles had just been launched in India in 2001!!

Bad product placement by Mr.Rajkumar Hirani.

7) How did the character played by Kareena Kapoor (studying in 1st or 2nd year of medicine) understand critical procedures of delivering a baby. Such procedures of gynecology aren't even taught at that level!

8) Rancho “Invents” a inverter that draws power from car batteries. Great! Genius!

But, what is there to invent???? Did inverters always not used car batteries????? Till a few years ago, all inverters used car/vehicle batteries, only in recent years manufactures have started marketing “Inverter Batteries” separately.

9) Finally, 400 patents in a decade!! Can you beat that! Does Mr.Hirani know how labourious it is for anybody to apply for a single patent, sitting here in India?

..I feel the movie should have stuck to the original and simple message of studying for the sake of knowledge and knowledge alone should take precedence over cramming for an examination or a degree or a job.

Amir Khan as a known perfectionist was expected to do better homework on this project.