It’s quite a feeling when audience in an Indian town picture hall claps in unison at the appearance of Aamir Khan as an alien in a spaceship. PK is good cinema, if not exactly great. Aamir has put at stake his stardom to convey a message worth conveying. For me, the bottom line for an Indian movie is that it is not exactly a copy of some previous foreign or Indian film. That’s the starting point for me. PK passes that test.

The intention behind the movie is good and that in itself is great. Although Aamir is an alien, the movie has nothing to do with interstellar world. The agency of alien eyes is used to see and project our world and its corrupt, silly practices from a fresh angle; how our world would look to someone who sees it for the first time. The web that we’ve woven for ourselves is actually very exploitative, suffocating and unjust- just to highlight this point, the director of the movie uses alien eyes.

The first experience of the alien on earth is that his medal-transmitter is snatched away, stolen. Now he becomes helpless in the big, bad world of India. He wants his medal back so that he may send signals back to his planet and go back home. Whosoever he asks, says that only Bhagwan (God) can help him. For contacting God, there are temples, mosques, churches, gurudwaras and god men. There are hineous, horrible practices of shedding blood, of rolling on earth, of beating chest etc . Amidst all this, our alien hero has to expose the hypocrisy of religious practices, expose evil god men, reunite the heroine (whom he secretly loves) with her flame, find his medal and go back home. He does all this stylishly, entertainingly speaking flawless Bhojpuri all the time.

PK is not exactly a creative spark like Lagaan or Kahaani; it is movie that wants to educate through entertainment. It succeeds in its mission by and large. The public is gripped till the end; there’s no boredom. If you’re not too critical, with help of Coleridge’s ‘willing suspension of disbelief’, you can enjoy this movie.