PK - Hirani is Still the King of Satirical Comedies

Posted on the 23 December 2014 by Remesh Venkitachalam
PK is funny, full of satires and message loaded. But that was expected of the director whose previous masterpieces included the unparalleled 'MunnaBhai' movies. Then again, he also had the highest grossing movie for the longest time with '3 Idiots'. But I think the ordinary audience who jump into movies like "Happy New Year' didn't know that. Therefore, it started slow in the box office. But for movies like these (of course other than the ardent Aamir followers), there is the scope to grow with the passage of word of mouth. It did just that.

PK questions the idea of god that has grown into a large scale business and a weapon for terrorizing the common man. It questions the pea sized human brain which would believe that a god who sees his creation as children will force upon ideas like jihad and conversions and difficult painstaking rituals. He also questions god men and priests and others who blindly follow them. Everybody in the audience were laughing and nodding every time Hirani creates over the top, but beautiful situations where the main character confronts these so called beliefs, but I am sure, it is out through the next ear the moment they are out of the hall.
Another point Hirani touched upon was a topic that I have always wondered about. His character says that earth is a special place. Things that propagate love and bonding like kiss or even sex has to be very private, but you can openly fight and kill and riot. In a perfect world, that would be something to think about. The former is a very harmless thing, but everybody makes a big hue and cry about those. But riots and fights, which hurt people are always justified with some or the other meaningless means. PK successfully puts out those questions in our minds on to the screen, without too much preaching and lot of fun.
It does go on the melodramatic side, but that is Hirani's strong point and he plays well with it. He got a little sidetracked trying to put in a romantic angle into Aamir's character. But, he gets Aamir to do another role that challenged the actor - this time he performed it without even a blink of an eye, literally. Aamir puts away the debacle of acting in 'Dhoom 3' and reminds us that he is still in the business of quality cinema. Anushka, Saurabh Shukla, Boman Irani and Sushant Singh supported the main character in all possible ways giving way to quite some laughs.
Music was cool, except for the love song in between that Aamir dreams of, which kind of was unnecessary. A little bit of appreciation for the CGI guys too. All in all, a good time pass. But, if someone actually understands the satire and changes, the better the impact of this movie.