Five Point Someone and 3 Idiots; A comparison

Author: Chetan Bhagat
Publisher: Rupa & Co

So, I read this book last Saturday. This book is well known, and this is told to be the inspiration behind the movie’3 Idiots’.
Seriously, I couldn’t find much similarities between the movie and the book. Few character sketches and few incidents were similar, but the movie is mostly the effort of Rajkumar Hirani himself.

The book is so nice, which I don’t have to tell you anyway, because you all must have read this book before!
The characters were lovable, and the story unfolds in an interesting manner, in an autobiographical way.

About the characters, let me compare them with the movie. Alok was the only character of the book, whom I found a resemblance with Sharman Joshi’s Raju in the movie. Barring the fact that Alok is a fatso, the traits and behaviour of Alok and Raju matches. The character is taken out from the book, and it was performed well on screen, by Sharman.

Ryan and Hari, I can’t describe them individually, Rajkumar Hirani has mixed like 40% Ryan, 15% Hari, and 45% his own creativity to mould up a character ‘Ranjho’ (played by Aamir Khan’). And he has taken the 50% of Hari, and 50% his own creativity, to develop a character ‘Farhan’ (R.Madhavan). This is quite interesting, the last time I found a similar trait of mixing up characters was when Malayalam director Padmarajan made a movie ‘Thoovaanathumbikal’, which was partly inspired from his own book, ‘Udakappola’.

Alok’s family straightly came out of the book to the movie, they are equally black-funny in both the book and movie. Professor Virus, played by Boman Irani in the movie inspires partly from Cherian, the professor in the novel. Pia (Kareena Kapoor) also doesn’t have deep roots from the book heroine, Neha, barring the fact that both are the ‘Villain’ professors’ daughters and both lost a brother due to her father’s pressure.

Apparently, I found the book to be having a younger feeling than the movie. The movie is also a classic, but in another dimension. Rajkumar Hirani should be appreciated for making that happen.

Chetan Bhagat wrote an excellent book, Raju inspired a little from it and made a movie, and I think there can still be another movie from this book, it would be good.