Movie Review: Pk- Nothing Lul about it!

There are movies and then there are stories. The first one impresses you. The later impacts! Mr.Rajkumar Hirani, always does the later. And he does it with so much of simplicity and earnestness that only few can. Have been a fan of his craft, ever since the Munnabhai series ,which was followed by the evergreen movie 3 idiots. But what he does with Pk is something, which probably no other director would have dared to explore or even delivered.

Imagine the plot- An alien lands into a country and then teaches his inhabitants a thing or two about god and religion, just as he discovers their culture.  About how one is real and the other probably man-made. Sounds crazy.Well go ahead, watch the movie to see how efficiently the master executes his craft.

Right from scene one, Aamir Khan (Pk) gets into the character of the lovable alien. Absolutely harmless, he has no clue what to do, when the only one thing (a locket) that can get him back to his planet, is flicked by a human. How he goes about understanding this strange human race, their behavior, language, culture and thus their religion forms the crux of the story. Flashy in his outfits (flicked from dancing cars) and armed with a yellow helmet Pk steals your heart with his mannerisms.  He speaks Bhojpuri, after well a Data transfer! His way of describing things as Lul (dull/sad in Bhojpuri) was a welcome comic relief. As he stumbles, falls and then  adapts successfully  to the religion angle, which is so deeply entrenched in our culture, the audience is left in splits.You relate to his experiences of god and religion. Somewhere I guess all of us have has this ‘what the hell is going on (alien) feeling’ when you see most people around us, proclaiming only their faith as the right one!

Anushka Sharma as Jaggu, plays a spunky reporter who helps Pk get his locket back. She looks lovely( apart from whenever she pouts on screen)  and acts with flair. Well the guy who sat next to me, kept on blowing kisses with a loud puchuk sound, whenever she came on screen. Only to be stopped by the girl in the immediate front row, who probably got a few drops of his saliva too on her head in the puchuk process!Well these quirky characters somehow always find me whenever I go for movies, but this guy was definitely Lul. In the end, he even ended up swearing at the Indian cricket team vice captain for obvious reasons!

Boman Irani ( the media honcho) , Sanjay Dutt ( Bhairavsingh and Pk’s friend) and Sourabh Shukla   (the self proclaimed god-man- Tapasvi) all do justice to their roles. Another entertainer of this movie is the master singer Sonu Nigam . His rendition of the song ‘Bhagvan hai kahan re tu’ is just awesome. Quite a reminder of his song-  Abhi mujh mein kahin from the bollywood movie Agneepath (2012) .However the other songs-Love is a w(b)aste of time and Chaar pal remind us of similar tracks in 3idiots (2009).

Unless we take an outsider’s view on the numerous faiths that we have created and perhaps in the process,separated men from men,we would never realize the gravity of the problem we are in. Maybe that is where lay the masterstroke in making the lead of this movie an alien. So that he could explore these problems and thus maybe allow us introspection. Wrong number is his satirical take for blind faith. And it is in this form of humour that the director successfully highlights the socially relevant problem of blind faith in god-men more than probably god himself.This problem not only plagues India but the world today.

In the climax face-off between Pk and Tapasvi, felt it got bypassed thereby giving prominence to the love angle between Jaggu and Sarfaraz( Sushant Singh Rajput). While Pk does return for one last scene, with a fellow alien (Ranbir Kapoor in a special appearance) and gives him his amazing self defense tips, one definitely wishes that the issue of blind faith that was so beautifully highlighted in the first half, had not got fizzled out. That probably remains the only separator between this movie and 3 idiots which obviously was more spot-on in its consistency.The point of religion is probably to make people keep the faith and keep moving optimistically in life.While this does get a mention in the climax,,the focus shifts to love.Which is why probably the track goes- ‘Love is a baste of time’. But then Pk definitely isn’t . Go for it Guys. Anti-Lul hai Sasuri!