Rajkumar Hirani takes his own time between
his movies; Munnabhai MBBS(2003), Lage Rao Munnabhai (2006), 3 Idiots (2009)
and now P.K.(2014), the time gap creates immense anticipation among fans. P.K.
was not an exception as well; the makers have kept the basic story and concept
of the movie under wrap and the first poster of movie created controversy and
curiosity alike.
As most of you may be aware by now
that the movie is about an alien who lands on earth, looses the gadget required
to travel back to his planes, and during his search for that gadget interacts
and questions the very logic of religion and god man. The obvious comparison of
the movie is with OMG (Oh My God) since both these movie were inspired by the
same play ‘kanji virrudh kanji’.
A lot is being said about the movie
in the social media sites, about the hypocrisy of the makers as they have tried
to question Hindu faith more than other religions. Even a lot of my friends
have felt offended by the movie, looking at such a strong reaction I for once
thought about dropping the idea about writing this review, or to just
concentrate on the entertainment value of the movie. However not expressing my
opinion on the topic or tweaking it to suit the general opinion was not an
option for me either. So let me stick my neck out and say that I didn’t felt
offended by the movie, I am not saying this to sound like a pseudo secular man
but because I genuinely believe so.
Hinduism has been an evolving
religion or way of life; a lot of reforms have happened here and unworthy
customs have been done away with on a massive scale. ‘Sati Pratha’, ‘Widow
Remarriage’ and ‘Child Marriage’ these issues have been tackled to a large extent.
The next important milestone should be
stopping people from aborting girl child.
Hinduism has its own set of problems
and so do other religions, but that shouldn’t stop us from reforming ourselves,
we can’t look at other religions and say why should be change if other religion
refuses to do so. You think and take care of your religion and let other people
think about their religion. If PK is not
that much critical about Islam and Christianity than let it be, our question
should be whether it raises genuine points where ever it does so.
As you may have observed, even I have
refrained from raising questions about other religions, so if I for one whose blog
would be read by only a few people is conscious of the repercussions, than one
may empathize with the makers of this movie which is being shown world wide.
Coming back to the entertainment
value of the movie, it is a nice film overall, however it is not Rajkumar
Hirani’s best work but is worthy of your time. During the making of this movie
OMG was released and makers of PK found the similarities between both the
movies and decided to improvise, and change the storyline wherever possible,
that may be the reason why this movie doesn’t have the kind of smooth flow
which is otherwise generally associated with Hirani’s movies.
The director always comes up with a new
concept in his movies, like ‘Jadoo is Jhappi’, ‘Ghandigiri’ and ‘All is well’,
however his concept of ‘wrong number’ in this movie is a far cry compared to
above mentioned master strokes.
Having said that the movie still
holds entertainment value for viewing, go for this one.
Rating ****.
