Three Idiots is an Indian film narrated through parallel dramas, one in the present and the other ten years in the past, the story follows the friendship of three students at an Indian engineering college and is a satire about the social pressures under an Indian education system.

It was also the highest-grossing film in its opening weekend in India, had the highest opening day collections for an Indian film up until that point and also held the record for the highest net collections in the first week for a Hindi film. Eventually, it became one of the few Indian films at the time to become successful in East Asian markets such as China and Japan, eventually bringing its worldwide gross to $90 million it was the highest-grossing Indian film ever at the time and the highest grossing Indian film of the 2000s. The film also had a social impact on attitudes to education in India as well as education in other Asian countries such as China.