PK review: Aamir Khan plays PK not only to his strengths, but adds something new: we’ve seen his earnestness several times before, but not artlessness.
PK movie review
Star Cast: Aamir Khan, Anushka Sharma, Saurabh Shukla, Boman Irani, Sanjay Dutt, Sushant Singh Rajput
Director: Rajkumar Hirani
Is that a bird or a plane?
Old question, new answer. No, it is ‘PK‘. And who is PK? A guy in madly printed shirts, buttoned tight around the neck, eyes glinting green, mouth ringed paan-red. And what is PK? A voice of wisdom and reason, in a Bhojpuri accent.(Read: Aamir Khan – The versatile, Dhoom-ster and PK)
Laden with so many distinctive tics, the lead character in Rajkumar Hirani’s latest could have been a mess. But Aamir Khan plays PK not only to his strengths, but adds something new: we’ve seen his earnestness several times before, but not artlessness. That lack of guile leads us to believe in PK, and makes the film, up till the seamless first half, a terrific watch.(Read: Five reasons you must watch PK)
Till then, we get freshness and fun. PK’s journey from a distant Rajasthan village– where he meets colourful characters(Sanjay Dutt, in a ‘lahariya safa’), and a lady of ill-repute from whom he picks up a couple of crucial learnings– to Rajdhani Delhi, is gone through smoothly. His bumping into TV reporter Jaggu aka Jagat Janani(Anushka Sharma, trying for elfin charm) leads him to unburden his soul. And his problem: something that belongs to him is lost, and until that is found, he cannot go home.
Post interval, it slumps. The focus, which till then is on a character who intrigues us while interesting things are happening to him, gets diluted by a wholly superfluous romance(and songs, tuneful as a couple are), and a face-off between the guy awash in goodness who asks all the right questions and the bad godman who has all the wrong answers.
The robustness of the dialogue(it has a word which made me gasp and laugh out loud, but I’m not telling which) and the sting in the situations way to exposition. From this point on, ‘PK‘ becomes a message-y let-us-expose-those-who-give-religion-a-bad-name, just like the magnificent ‘Munnabhai’ took the pants off bad medical practice, its sequel docked legal sharks, and ‘3 Idiots’ taught a lesson to misguided educators.