Saurabh Shukla | My Journey So Far….

Aamir Khan, Rajkumar Hirani, Vidhu Vinod Chopra and Boman Irani; you mix all these ingredients in a recipe and its dish is going to be a sure shot hit. PK is that hit movie.

But, are you just expecting it to be a hit? Or, you were expecting fireworks from it?

Don’t know about you, but I was expecting Fireworks and I was let down a bit. Why? I will soon delve into that, but lets first go through the basics of this movie – PK.

PK is Indian Film Directed by Rajkumar Hirani and produced by Vidhu Vinod Chopra along with Siddharth Roy Kapur and Hirani himself. This movie stars Aamir Khan in the lead role of PK; while Anushka Sharma, Sushant Singh Rajput, Boman Irani and Saurabh Shukla plays important part in this movie. Sanjay Dutt has also done a crucial cameo in this movie, but is completely wasted in this movie.

PK, played by Aamir Khan, is an alien who got stranded on Earth when someone stole his remote control device; his only way to call back his spaceship. PK then embarks on a hilarious journey of finding his remote. He goes to Police and every common man he can encounter, to get clues for finding remote, but only answer that he got was, “Only God can help you find it”.

Thus he decides to first find God and then he will take God’s help to find remote. Now,the big question is, Where is God? He went from Temples to Churches, from Mosques to Gurudwara, but to no avail. Until one day he accidentally bumps into a Baba’s aashram where he saw his remote projected as Shiva’s Manka/bead from Himalayas. Comes Anushka, who then plan a plot to help PK get his remote back from Baba, and in doing so they expose Baba and his claim of talking with God.

What works for the movie?

This movie is a full on entertainer. It will make you laugh, cry, question and will evoke so many emotions inside you. Hirani has chosen an apt way to use an alien to see our world from the perspective of an outsider. It gives an objectifying view of the whole spiritual corruption that is happening around us.

Aamir Khan is always flawless. He can be a student, or a magician or he could be an alien. whatever role you will give him; he will be that character to the hilt. Anushka and Sushant are the also in their best form. Anushka has looked confident in front of Aamir. Movie on a whole is good and watchable.

What does not work for the Movie?

One of the drawbacks of this movie is that it is following in the footsteps of ‘3 Idiots‘, and Munnabhai genre. It’s just not upto that standard. Reasons are many –

To start with, first half of the movie is tight and edited well. It is right on point in showing an objective picture of our religious differences and dogma attached to them. Comes second half and film loses its objectivity to an illogical emotional drama.

This movie sets a pace where at the end you are waiting for that big climax; where our protagonist PK will silent the Godman and his followers, once and for all, by his quick wit and logic. But alas, that climax was never there. Instead there was all this ‘Rona-Dhona’, India-Pakistan, Love Story, Baap Beti emotional drama and all.

That last scene could have made a lot of difference. It could have taken this film to a height where Hirani’s other films are, atleast. They could have written down an extraordinary debate where Godman could have shown to acknowledge his defeat.

Most absurd is the love story shown between Anushka and Sushant. Who in his right mind break up like that? You are left at the altar and you will not even ask why?? Infact, they were kind of shown living in together and the very next day they just left the country without even seeing each other. If I would have to leave a country, it would take me a week just to pack my stuff.

Some Hindu religious organizations/groups are protesting against this movie as it show Hinduism in bad light. To be fair, it does show each religion that way; but their main villain/protagonist being a Hindu Godman (only), does raises eyebrow. Hirani and Aamir for once could have taken a bold step and shown representative of every religious leader in the final debate. But again, the end is not at all what I would expect from this combo.

One more fact that is not highlighted about the movie is, that the character of PK was loosely based on ‘Abraham Kovoor‘, who was responsible for running a campaign against so called Frauds and Godman. His most popular target was ‘Sathya Sai Baba‘. Thus if you translate it into a film, you can relate to the Saurabh Shukla character more.

My suggestion to those who are protesting against this movie – Do not protest on social platform. You are only promoting this movie by doing so. Remember when it comes to films, every publicity is a good publicity.

Suggestion to viewers – Go watch the movie but do not expect sparks flying the way they it happened in ‘ 3 Idiots‘.