PK: God is not great. And neither is PK.

Rating: *

There’s one thing that all the discussions and debates about PK fail to address: it’s a god-awful movie. That’s the beginning and end of my beef. So it’s the people who revere cinema that should take offence, if there is any offence to be taken. And regardless of whether you’re a Hindu, a Muslim or a Rajnikanth fan, if you vilify the movie for anything but the movie itself, you’re searching for the Holy Grail (by which I mean, it’s stupid).

For what it’s worth, I thought director Rajkumar Hirani’s premise was a relevant one. In today’s times, religion is the God of all things toxic. Everyone, every day, pays a price for its existence. Why then, do you use a budget the size of Sri Sri Ravishankar’s NRI donor fund (several crores) and a talented cast to deliver a piece of work that’s so high on emotion, so low on IQ and so big on platitudes? PK does what religious fundamentalists do. In cinematic terms, it sweeps you up with its rhetoric in the first half and then makes you want to blow yourself up in the second. What’s worse? Even the New Testament has a better second half.

The screenplay (co-written by Hirani and Abhijat Joshi) opens with a deserted PK (Aamir Khan). Khan’s character is a lovable, bug-eyed, big-eared fish out of water with a Bhojpuri accent. We follow the potentially charming oddball on his journey across north India, as he searches for something he has lost. The trouble is, PK knows nothing about what makes people tick. More specifically, he knows nothing about how religion works. He’s a blank slate. It’s through his unsullied eyes that we’re supposed to see the world. A good filmmaking choice. But after the interval, the focus shifts and we begin to see a lot of the director’s own biases instead. We move from PK’s innocence and inquisitiveness to Hirani’s skepticism and what seems to be a misplaced sense of morality.

In what was probably the most interesting scene in the film, Jagat Janani (Anushka Sharma), a television reporter, finds PK placing and distributing missing posters of God across Delhi. She thinks there’s a great story there. And she follows the trail. From then on, the story fights religious extremism with emotionally charged condescension. It isn’t constructive, objective or engaging. Several religions are rightly ribbed for their flaws, but it’s all very harebrained. And the hellish second half made me think about how religious fundamentalists thrive on people who counter them with the wrong questions.

Moving on. PK’s cast includes some fine actors like Boman Irani (wasted) and Saurabh Shukla, whose fraudulent godman character is at once, the best and the worst thing about the film. This is one of the highest grossing Indian movies ever. So the producers are probably now way richer than the godman in the film. Hirani will surely be back. Hopefully, with a better story.  

I get that it takes time, money and a lot of effort to stitch a good movie together. But when you’ve got a) the resources to make a good one and b) thousands of loyal sheep willing to flock to a cinema hall, you’ve got to do better. 600 bucks for this dross? That is blasphemy. I’d rather donate that money to a temple sheltering the homeless. Or go on a pilgrimage to a pub.

No, God is not great. And neither is PK.

Starring:

Aamir Khan

Anushka Sharma

Boman Irani

Sushant Singh Rajput

Saurabh Shukla

Director: Rajkumar Hirani

Writers: Rajkumar Hirani & Abhijat Joshi

Producers: Vidhu Vinod Chopra, Rajkumar Hirani

Editor: Rajkumar Hirani

Director of Photography: C.K. Muraleedharan

Music: Shantanu Moitra