Film, Hindi, Review

PK

An alien (Aamir Khan) learns to survive on earth while taking on a fake God-man (Saurabh Shukla), who has the locket he needs to go back home.

With his earlier three films, the Munna Bhai series and 3 Idiots, Rajkumar Hirani has created his own unique template of filmmaking. His latest offering, PK, too sits quite comfortably within it so yes, we again have an outsider at the centre who thinks out of the box and makes one seriously question the rationale behind much of what we take for granted; yes, the social issue (here the misuse of religion) is made palatable by dealing with in a humorous, simplistic manner leading to an idealistic easy solution, and yes, the film combines some well-written dialogue with laughter and tears expertly enough to create a fairly entertaining yarn that largely succeeds in its intentions.

The first half of the film proceeds smoothly enough, the laughs are many, a lot of the points dealing with the mess we’ve made of our life especially through religion hit home. Hirani makes sure we laugh (and think) along with PK rather than at him and that is a big achievement. That said, here is a rather thin line between looking at the world through PK’s child-like innocence and being childishly stupid and silly and the film is not always able to stay one side of the line. Some of the gags are stretched much too far telling on the pace of the film. The narrative flow too gets choppy in the second half with the one sided romance between PK and Jaggu appearing labored with typical filmi cliches (him looking at her dancing and realizing he is in love). The big debate is not entirely satisfying and the resolution appears much too pat and easy, even if its emotions carry it somewhat through. There is also a ot of repetition with issues that the film addresses that finally tell on its 153 minutes running time.

Aamir Khan is the life and soul of PK and though one was apprehensive about his funny face making in the promos, it all falls in place within the overall scheme of the film and it has to be said he delivers. Bringing wide-eyed innocence to his character, he truly makes you care about him even as he raises what appear to be simplistic questions but which actually have far deeper connotations. In a film that is all about PK and Aamir, the supporting cast does its bit and is absolutely spot on, even if one would have liked to see more of Boman Irani. Leading lady Anushka Sharma is fine enough if one were to look beyond her disastrous lip job that takes away all the attention from her performance. One wonders why someone perfectly good-looking with a most disarming smile to boot had to do this?! Oh well…

Hirani’s films are all about the storytelling and not really about technical flourishes. In that sense, PK is no different as the technicalities are just about adequate. However, the songs are ordinary and do not really work, while the obvious and weak background score is the one element that truly lets the film down.

All in all, PK has enough going for it and is worth a watch. That is something one can’t really say about most of our films, and even more so this year that surely till now must be one of Hindi cinema’s worst ever.

Score57%

Hindi, Drama, Comedy, Color

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=82ZEDGPCkT8

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