Movie review of PK – It is just PuKe

I happened to watch the movie PK last weekend and with the entire buzz that the movie is generating, I thought I should add my 10 paise with this review. The post is rather long and is more than just a review; it is almost a scene-by-scene narration; enough reason why I can never be a proper film critic. I was watching a Hindi movie on the big screen after many years and realized that maybe that was a statistic that needn’t have been corrected.

Word on one side of the street is that the movie is awesome, with phenomenal acting by Aamir Khan. Word on the right side of that same street is that the movie denigrates Hindus. For once, I don’t think the right side is wrong in feeling offended with what was shown on screen.

Before I get into the bad aspects of the movie, let me admit that the first one hour of the movie is really funny. Come on – when you see a guy pull out a pyjama stuck between the ass cheeks of another man, anyone will laugh. And when the former tries to put back the jammies to the same place where it resided earlier, anyone will be ROFL. If you didn’t laugh, maybe there is something up your ass.

Funny as that scene may have been, what it really means in the context of the movie is how the movie managed to ridicule my belief system and shoved it up my ass with the makers and watchers enjoying the pain.

Now, before I get into how the movie mocked everything that Hindus do, I will first describe why I think this was a badly made movie. That way, hopefully, you will realize why the movie is bad by itself in the first place and then understand how bad it shows the Hindu way of worship.

So, according to the plot, PK is this alien from another planet where the living beings are exactly like the humans on planet Earth. On landing here to research the human race, the alien is instantly robbed and loses his transmitter/locator: ergo he can’t contact his space ship and reach home. What complicates things is that this alien cannot talk because in his planet, everyone communicates by telepathy. The alien also conveys later in the movie that because they communicate by telepathy, they don’t have to speak verbally. Therefore they also don’t lie to each other like humans do – think something and say/act otherwise.

Later on, this alien says that by holding hands of any human being, it will be able to leverage the same teleconnection power and pick up the language skill needed to communicate with the human beings on Earth. With the help of a good Samaritan (sic) portrayed by Sanjay Dutt (ostensibly during one of the many Leave days he gets in Prison – probably more than what Corporates give to employees) the alien connects with a hooker and after 6 hours, of just holding hands, it becomes an expert in Bhojpuri.

Now get this, the alien also picks up one habit of the hooker, which is eating paan. Somehow, of all the knowledge that the hooker has in her brain, the alien is able to pick up just the Bhojpuri vocabulary and the habit of eating paan.

The alien then tells Sanjay Dutt about how someone robbed him and is then advised to go to Delhi in search of the thief and remote. In Delhi, the alien now goes around asking all and sundry about the thief and remote. The irked people either ask the alien if he is drunk (hence the alien now calls himself PK) or keep stressing that only God can help him.

I will now break for some doubts:

Doubt#01: After the alien picks up local vocabulary can’t he understand what “peekay” means? So why should he call himself PK? Couldn’t he tell the humans what his name is? Does he have no name in that planet?

Doubt#02: Typically all life forms undergo evolution. It is safe to assume that even PK’s life form has a similar experience. So in a planet where all life forms communicate to each other through telepathy, wouldn’t it be a natural evolutionary process to lose your voice box? Then, how come PK is suddenly able to speak on planet Earth?

Doubt#03: Then the whole “hold hands” for data transfer aspect. While it may be possible for that mode of communication in their planet, how would it work here?

Doubt#04: As mentioned earlier, how come the alien is able to pick up more than just language – he picks up paan eating habit. Why not other habits? Or thoughts?

We now return to the main show.

Now that PK has been told that only God can help him, he now seeks God. He visits a temple and buys an idol from the shop outside. He realizes that the idol is not God and then questions it to the shopkeeper. Thereafter he goes around from temple to church and also attempts an entry into a mosque.

He obviously doesn’t get the answer he wants and comes to the conclusion that there is a lot of hocus pocus going around. All this information is actually shared by PK to a TV reporter who sees the possibility of a story with this person. However, when he talks about him being an alien she doesn’t really believe him and stops listening to his story. When taking leave she suddenly hears him refer to something she hasn’t told him and is now intrigued.

She takes him along and instantly, they are encountered by an old man asking for alms. PK gives some cash and then gives him a separate note asking him to use it for tips. Basically, with the old man holding PK’s hands and asking for alms, PK is able to understand what the old man is up to. He then moves out and the reporter goes to check what the old man is doing. She sees that PK’s assessment was correct. Instantly, she goes after PK and tells him that she will help him.

Doubt#05: How did this reporter not really bother to think that the entire old man sequence was a setup and simply buys what was played out in front of her?

Doubt#06: PK keeps picking up cash from Dancing cars – when couples are doing it in a car, he just sneaks up and picks the cash from their clothes. That is basically stealing. So apparently, in his home planet, people don’t lie but are not averse to stealing. Nice!

Meanwhile PK is still hunting for his remote and when he walks into an idol making workshop by chance, he makes an earnest plea to God to help him go back. He then goes around town printing posters that say that God is missing. He comes across Lord Shiva (someone dressed in that form for a local play) and confronts him. After chasing him around, PK now enters a congregation run by some Godman.

The Godman has hordes of followers and is propagating his request to build a new temple for Lord Shiva. That request he explains, is because he came across a rare gem in the Himalayas and then shows it to the gathering. PK takes a look and lo behold, that gem is the remote that he is looking for. He asks the Godman to give it but is obviously chased away.

The reporter, Jagat Janani played by Anushka Kohli Sharma, now takes him along to the ashram to confront the Godman. She goads PK to bombard the Godman with all the questions he came up with while trying to understand God. He does that dutifully and the Godman is at unease. JJ then starts filming the interaction surreptitiously to use it for her news report.

JJ then conceives a plan for a show on TV where people can call up a number and tell the channel about all the “wrong number” things happening with their religion. People call up a lot and the program is a big hit. But JJ’s father, who is a big bhakt of the Godman, disowns her and she is upset. They even try to get Daddy dearest on their side with some experiment, but he clearly aint budging.

JJ and PK start living in the same flat and go to office on her bike, visit all tourist places around Delhi. Suddenly, PK is now attracted to JJ and falls in love with her. He also finds out that she was in love with someone and that didn’t work out; all this again by holding her hands for a few minutes. By now, the Godman is upset that his business is down and so a challenge is thrown to PK – confront me on Live TV and we will see who is correct.

Doubt#06: So, PK who first says that holding hands helps him pick up a language, is now able to read thoughts as well. So wouldn’t he also have the thoughts of a hooker in his head?

Before the show begins, PK’s long lost friend Sanjay Dutt calls him to say that he is visiting him with the thief who sold his remote to the Godman. But when the train arrives at the station, there is a bomb blast and PK’s friend and the thief die. PK is shaken up and arrives at the show in a sedate state.

The Godman and PK argue about this and that, watched by a live audience in the studio and countless people outside. PK then drags JJ into the discussion and asks her to narrate how the Godman had ruined her love life, by predicting something about her Pakistani lover while studying college in Belgium. So on Live TV, her love story is narrated and everyone gets to know that on the day she and her Paki lover intended to marry (in a church btw), he didn’t show up. She assumed that he abandoned her and got on with her life.

PK then says that maybe he didn’t abandon her and it was a case of mistaken identity. There was another wedding at the same time and a message meant for the other bride was wrongly handed to JJ and then life took a different route. JJ now sees that possibility and after being encouraged by PK, her TV show producer and stage audience, she calls up the Pak embassy in Belgium.

Doubt#06: This is another example of how bad a journalist can be – she is one who just reacts to what is seen and doesn’t bother to dig deeper.

Now the kind folks at the Pak embassy instantly recognize the JJ has called, conference her Paki lover in Pak and with everyone listening in now, JJ and her lover reunite. The Godman accepts defeat and the remote is handed back to PK.

The movie then pans out to PK going back to the place where he landed and JJ somehow finds out PK is in love with her. But when she questions him indirectly, he lies and she writes in her book, that PK came to Earth with his great thoughts and took our one bad habit that he didn’t have (not eating “paan”, but lying).We get to the end of the movie and there is a blink and you miss appearance by Ranbhir Kapoor.

This completes my movie narration and with some of the Doubts inserted you will see the problems I have with the movie:

1. I haven’t seen a more poorly etched role like that of JJ – a journalist who just cannot ask questions
2. If the Godman indeed predicted that JJ’s lover would ditch her and it did happen, doesn’t that mean that he has powers? Why would you still want to disprove him? Why didn’t you use the same logic with the alien?
3. The alien PK - while Aamir did act well, the character actually didn’t seem to want to go home. The focus was more on helping Earthlings than his need to head home.
4. Also on the acting front – all he did was appear open-eyed. One can convey many emotions by opening your eyes. Anger and Confusion are two such things I can think of easily – but all that he shows is stupidity; which is good, but not necessarily great acting.
5. How did this alien who hadn’t come across the concept of God in his home planet, suddenly start making earnest pleas to the idols – I am sure fans of Aamir are touched by his acting in that scene, but it didn’t suit the character.
6. Basically, the movie didn’t require PK to be an alien. The plot was basically about fish-out-of-water situation and even a regular human being, with possibly amnesia, would have been a better fit.
7. Also, not just the journalist, somehow nobody in the movie seemed to bother about who PK was. Everyone just “accepted” him as is. Even the Godman who was being hounded by this guy, whose business empire was being shattered by this guy, didn’t bother to find out where PK came from.
8. So, you may have laughed a lot, found some funny scenes, seen some decent acting and even heard some questions on religion that you have in mind and are afraid to ask; therefore, you may have come to the conclusion that this was a great movie. However, it was a badly scripted one due to some basic loopholes that I have listed. Let me score some brownie points with Aamir fans and say that I am not complaining about his acting; just that he has starred in a bad movie.
9. But then, should we blame just the Director because the movie was bad? Should we then credit the Directors for all the good movies of Aamir?
10. If the movie didn’t have the pretension of being different and conveying a strong message, I would have ignored all these things. But I get nit-picky simply because it is being hailed as a very great movie.
11. Also, this movie inherits basic concepts and steals scenes primarily from K-PAX, Avatar, Oh My God and Lage Raho Munnabhai.

Now to phase 2 of the review/narration where I try to prove how Hinduism has been ridiculed in the movie.

In the entire movie, you can only see PK making fun of the Hindu way of worship, primarily idol worship. He asks why we have so many Gods. And if you really look at the core sub-plot of PK trying to retrieve the remote from the Godman, he doesn’t really engage in any activity that proves that the Godman is a con. He still questions why God makes you undergo suffering? He asks why God asks you to come to some distant temple.

All the comedy pieces are set only in temples. There is a shot of him going to a church with Hindu based offerings and there, he questions the Christian concept of God and Jesus. Fair deal. But, how come the movie doesn’t show him go to a mosque? They only show a quick shot of him going to a mosque with bottles of wine and he is stopped in the road itself. Chased subsequently, like many other places. So the token references to Christianity and fleeting reference to Islam is done. But the movie can spend about 2 hours focussing on Hinduism? That pretty much defines secularism in India.  

During the whole “wrong number” montages, there is another reference to Christian conversions. But there is nothing really talked about Islamic terror or oppression, other than a one-liner from a girl in burqa wanting to study. But the montage contains many references to the bad elements of Hinduism. Why this discrimination?

When PK goes about sticking posters that God is missing – why didn’t he post anything about Jesus missing or Mohammed missing? Did he already grasp the difference between God and prophet? If he was smart enough to get that, why couldn’t he understand what was going on with Hinduism?

There is also this long drawn scene where he confronts a guy dressed up as Lord Shiva. PK corners him in a public loo and then chases him all over. Which is how he meets the Godman and so as a lead-up to that scene, this may be ok. But do you really have to show Lord Shiva in such poor light? In fact, that actor is supposed to make an entry on stage in some drama and we hear a lady announce that the might Lord Shiva will appear now. We then see Lord Shiva shouting for help, tripping all over the place and run like crazy. Yes it was a funny scene for a 5 year old that has seen similar things in cartoons. Should Lord Shiva be made a caricature on big screen?

Even in the Dravidar Kazhagam School of film making, epitomized in Parasakthi, the protagonist at least mouths powerful dialogues about how he attacked priests in temple, only because he didn’t want the temple to be the residing place of scoundrels. Yes, it was an attack on the Brahmins and priests, but at least, they stuck to the theme of attacking a villainous priest in the movie.

Similarly, in PK, the movie could have actually gone to length to show what a big fraud the Godman was. That wouldn’t have really ruffled feathers and I would have really ignored all the other goof-ups and said this movie rocks. But when you go about calling yourself the epitome of perfection with your movies and make insensitive references to the philosophies of one religion, it just shows how callous a person you are.

Then there is this dialog where JJ remarks that with a name like Jagat Janani she is ruined. Is that really such a bad name? Maybe she thinks Mary or Khadija is a cool name. Or perhaps, prefers the names that Hollywood stars give their children – Apple, son of Gwyneth Paltrow, Coco Riley, kid of Courtney Fox, Destry, kid of Steven Spielberg etc.

To ask a clichéd question – why didn’t you choose to make this movie about PK fighting a Moulvi or a Bishop for that matter? Do you mean to tell me that they are all paragons of virtue who espouse the ideal way of reaching God? Should we pull out statistics of how many paedophiles are there in the Church? Or how many Moulvis are terrorists?  And I am not referring to India, because the defence would be that they are foisted cases.

To sum up this rather long rant, I think the movie was bad on two counts – one for being a badly scripted movie with half-cooked characters and two, for being a vehicle to ridicule Hindus.