I Wish I Had Seen PK Before Munnabhai MBBS, Lage Raho & 3 Idiots

This is not a PK review. I am not a critic nor a filmmaker, so I cannot review a movie. Still I would like to point out some things that I felt while watching PK. Rajkumar Hirani is one of the finest directors of this generation. His ideas and visions inspire all age group. He knows pretty well how to blend his characters into Indian sentimentality. And it is a good thing because it works, every time he shows something on screen.

If you ask me, nobody understands Indian emotions better than Raju Hirani. That being said I did not like PK as much as I should have. Here are some reasons. Of course there will be comparisons. After all you are Raju Hirani. 

 To be honest it would be a delight to see Boman Irani as the antagonist. His and every other character other than Anushka Sharma is completely ignored. Actually there is nothing there for anybody in the movie other than Anushka Sharma and Aamir Khan. But that’s not the real problem. The real problem is it felt like there is a character missing. I really missed a ‘circuit’, a ‘Raju Rastogi’ or a ‘Farhan’. Where is the magic of unselfish, witty, heartfelt friendship? Where is that selfless, adorable funny guy who loves our hero unconditionally and never loses his side? Sanjay Dutt is not that character. Even Anushka Sharma is not. I really would not mind spending another thirty minutes of screen space watching that character.

 I am not going to debate about the whole GOD-MEN propaganda that is going on at present on every social platform because that would be a complete waste of time and space. But if I am not wrong, not long before, we saw a similar GOD-MEN themed movie named OMG Oh My God!, starring Paresh Rawal and Akshay Kumar. And that was one nice movie. The idea of showing the ‘GOD-MEN theme’ might be different but at the end of the day the essence is same. And most of the time while watching PK, my mind went back to Paresh Rawal arguing about god’s existence. So it did not actually do anything other than refreshing the memory of the other movie. Now GOD is not the real problem. It’s the presentation. As far as Raju Hirani’s abilities go I expected much more than this.

 Remember that epic vacuum cup delivery scene from ‘3 Idiots’ or the Jimmy Shergill dying scene followed by Sanjay Dutt’s breakdown from ‘Munnabhai MBBS’? Even the final wedding scene from ‘Lage Raho‘! I still find my heart racing when I see those scenes now. Those scenes were epic because they represent us, our culture not as Indians but as human beings. It is not about our love for a single person but our love for the society. They teach us that we can together make the world a better place. But sadly that scene is missing from PK. A final argument between the two main characters about GOD after the protagonist has a breakdown due to a huge loss and it ends up meeting two other people in love who lost each other due to their own mistakes which has really nothing to do with god. At a point when in ‘lage raho’, munna bhai taught life lessons on radio, I wanted to stand up and clap with every other person in the movie but not here on PK, where the anchor trying to make a phone call to her long lost lover all over the world live on national television. That is just not acceptable. It is off the subject of the whole argument in the first place. It should have stuck with GOD.

 Nonetheless PK is a good movie. I just hoped I had seen PK before Munnabhai MBBS, Lage Raho and 3 Idiots. Or may be its just me. I guess I need a jadu ki jhappi.