PK Hindi Movie Review

It has been a wonderful morning at the cinemas. Entertaining yet thought provoking, fun filled and yet conscience awakening. This is not a take it or leave it film. It is a lap it up moment. Brand Raj Kumar Hirani is in full swing just as Brand Religion – the subject matter of the present outing. The film is packed with endearing moments that remind you of Munnabhai chiselled with class and navigated with the experience of success. Every moment of the 153 minutes keeps you engaged. The Aamir – Hirani combo is a viewers delight and a winner all the way. It makes the claim to the various 100 crore clubs irrelevant and irreverent. Here is mainstream cinema at its very very best and in a manner that a cinema crazy country richly deserves. Miss it at your own peril. You may be called upon to explain what you were doing when it was at the theatres if you miss seeing it.
The protagonist is a naked extra terrestrial human being who lands on earth only to be quickly robbed of his remote that would connect to his space ship and the ticket to return home. Caught in a world he does not know, he swims through the currents of a nation completely bugged by the organised sector of religion. He acquires the name PK (Aamir Khan) and meets up with Jannu (Anushka Sharma) just back from Belgium nursing a broken heart. She has been jilted by her Pak boy friend Sarfaraz (Sushant Singh Rajput). The script is about how the alien finds the state of religion hard to believe let alone adapt and takes the naiveté route to expose the God men who are calling the shots. Interestingly the script refuses to get politics and the like into the tale and keeps it simple (a formula now fine tuned by HIrani).
The Gola (that’s how PK would refer to the earth) has millions with blind faith and unlike OMG the film does not ask too many questions and does not get uncomfortably critical either. If Jadu ki Jhappi and All is Well were the key to the scripts of the earlier films, this time it is Wrong Number. The parody is picture perfect – inclusive of the collection of Gandhi pictures. The guy realises that Gandhi has value only when on a currency note!! The Mandhwa to Delhi awakening is told with a lot of tongue in cheek humour and heads to the finale which has the customary tears but all well under control and check.
The film is rich of fine moments and narratives: the jail scene, the plea to improve communication lines when he believes that the calls are going to the wrong Gods or that the wrong managers of God are taking the calls are penetratively impacting. Things like the God man making inelegant attempts to draw lines and divide people in the name of religion, the love line: he loved me enough to let me go; asking the idol seller if he made God or God made him; the scene where he believes that the effectiveness of prayer is gone because the idol’s battery is down; the claim of the God man: we know how to protect our God are all very poignant statements that show that the film maker was in complete command of the narrative and would not let a single slip harm the larger picture.
The film is also a tribute to the Voltaire dicta: If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him. But above all it is a salute to good entertainment. While the Director clearly establishes how much of a master he is of the craft and the script he commands the respect and cooperation of every member of the crew. The lyrics and the music are in perfect tandem. The support cast led by Saurabh Shukla and with the likes of Pariskshit Sahani and Boman Irani are good. Sushank Singh Rajput leaves an impression even in a minuscule role and leaves the audience craving for more. Anushka is not just superb star material in the usual Bollywood sense but is full of energy as the bubble filled journalist and the loosing lover. Well Aamir is himself- intelligent, crafty, committed, endured, endearing and above all sincere.
There is this wonderful scene when after a bomb blast at a Railway station you have a transistor from where you hear Mukesh sing that Kaifi Azmi number:
Aasaman pe hai khuda aur zameen pe hum
Aaja kal wo is taraf dekhata hai kam
So true about good film makers too!!

Rating 4 stars
+ The theme, its handling and Anushka
– Hardly anything.
L. Ravichander.