Some time ago I’d written a review of a film called OMG which if you didn’t read, you
probably ought to. It’s right here.
Then last night I watched a film which is attracting rather
a lot of attention these days, another acronymic title called PK. The flick apparently is well on the
way to becoming a superhit, just like OMG
wasn’t. Which would go to prove some kind of point, only I can’t think
what. Or rather I can, but it’s pretty much a cliché along the lines of “nice
guys finish last”.
So, before we get any further, let’s go over the main
points:
One day at high noon, in the desert of Rajasthan in Western
India, a gigantic spaceship comes sailing down out of the sky and decants an
alien. Said alien (Bollywood actor Aamir Khan, who isn’t the worst of the Indian
acting stable by a very long shot) rather
closely resembles a human being, but for permanently goggly eyes, a stilted
gait, and stuck out ears. Oh, and he’s – apart from a blue glowing crystal on a
chain round his neck – completely naked. You know, like all space travelers are
in the softcore porno SF movie genre.
Well, and a local villager sees him, tears off his crystal and runs off with it, leaving him stranded. Said crystal was actually a “remote control” which would bring back the spaceship to take our alien home – because he’s here on a mission to research humanity. I’d have thought watching a few TV shows before landing might have been useful. But oh well. I’m not an alien and I can’t answer for their thought processes.
Meanwhile, far, far away, in Belgium, our heroine – a waiflike
young lady called Jaggu – is desperately trying to get a ticket to attend a
show featuring Bollywood legend Amitabh Bachchan. But the show is sold out,
except for one single, solitary ticket offered by a scalper. As luck and
stereotyping would have it, Jaggu has competition for the ticket; a handsome
and dashing young Pakistani called Sarfaraz. And they fall in love, kiss and
sleep together, all within the time that the sun hasn’t moved appreciably in
the sky.
Oh well. Jaggu’s dad is a Hindu fundie who’s a devotee of a
certain sleazy “godman” called Tapasvi. Jaggu tells dad over Skype about
Sarfaraz, dad hits the roof, and goes rushing to Tapasvi, laptop in hand and
open. Tapasvi lectures the girl on her ingratitude for loving a Pakistani
Muslim and predicts the failure of the relationship. Just like any perfectly normal
and well-adjusted girl would do, Jaggu immediately proposes marriage to
Sarfaraz, you know, to prove the godman wrong. And the next day she’s at the
registrar’s office, where all she finds is a letter saying, basically, and in
BLOCK LETTERS, “SORRY, I CAN’T MARRY YOU”.
OK, so we jump six months to the future and Jaggu is in
Delhi, working as a TV show hostess sick and tired of the crap she’s hosting. I
don’t know, if you get enough money out of the job, most TVites would go right
along. I mean just check the Western reporting on Ukraine. But sick and tired
or not, she’s on a Delhi commuter train when a bizarre looking individual in
strange clothes and a yellow crash helmet comes in, gives her a pamphlet saying
God is missing, and leaves. Her curiosity aroused, she follows.
You know who this weird character is, don’t you? Our
friendly neighbourhood alien, that’s who. So we find out – in an interview
conducted in a jail cell of all places – that he got hold of clothes and money,
was knocked down by a car and rescued by a friendly musical band leader, and
learned Bhojpuri (a language closely allied to Hindi) from a hooker. He can
read minds and learn languages from holding people’s hands, you see.
Being told that his remote control is probably in Delhi, he
went there, and began asking around. Everyone mocked him as a “peekay”
(drunkard) and told him god knows where his remote would be. So – like an alien
might do - he went around looking for
god, and didn’t find him anywhere. Oh, he found plenty of godlets and idols and
mullahs and priests, churches and temples and gurudwaras. But as for the god, he didn’t find it anywhere. So
he started passing around posters asking for information about the missing deity’s
whereabouts.
Read no further! Spoilers!
OK, so you will read further. On your own head be it.
So, to cut an overly elongated story short, the TV
anchorwoman makes a star out of the alien, now called PK, who ends up
challenging Tapasvi – who turns out to own the missing remote control, because
coincidence – to a debate. During the course of the debate, the godman claims
he has a direct connection to god and “proves” it by saying he’d correctly
predicted the end of Jaggu’s relationship with Sarfaraz. PK then does some
mind-reading, there’s some more conincidencing, and, don’t you know, all’s well
that ends well, in the world and out of it.
Before I go on to the things this flick taught me, I’ll say
a couple of things to the people who made this:
First, if you’re
going to rip off OMG, try and be a
leeeeeetle less obvious about it. Don’t repeat things almost verbatim. And
please leave ET alone, that’s been
copied about a hundred times. Doesn’t leave too much to the imagination if you
can see everything coming twenty minutes in advance.
Second, you guys
are supposed to be professionals. You’re
supposed to know when to quit while ahead. A film that works in its first half
and falls off the cliff in its second half, mainly because you decided to make
it maudlin and saccharine emotional, you have
only yourselves to blame.
Anyway, I’ll thank you, makers of PK, for teaching me the following things, hitherto unknown to me:
1. You can totally sail a gigantic spaceship, in bright
metallic colours reminiscent of a new car, over an Indian state bang on the
Pakistan border, with no camouflage but an odd-shaped, fast-moving cloud. You
can then land it in broad daylight next to a railway line, on which a freight
train is running, and then take off again after landing someone. All without
being noticed. And then you can do it all
again at least twice more. Hell, I knew India’s air defences were
overhyped, but I didn’t know they were as bad as that.
2. On the outskirts of every desert village in Rajasthan, you
can find people – adults – having sex in cars in daylight with their windows
open and all their clothes off. Also they’ll be so busy screwing they won’t
notice when you reach in through the windows and filch their clothes and money.
And there are enough of them as to constitute your primary source of clothing and
income.
3. You can bribe your way into a jail cell to interview a
prisoner, and then bribe him out of the prison. Come to think of it, that last
bit isn’t all that far fetched.
4. You can always find crowds of identically-dressed religious
people to chase you through slum alleys, baying for your blood.
5. Random strangers – old men, ticket scalpers, boatmen and the
like – in Belgium speak and even sing Hindi. And they also like to attend Amitabh
Bachchan shows, even if they have to rip you off to do it.
6. If you’ve been ripped off along with someone of the opposite
sex, the correct course of action is to fall in love with them within minutes,
have sex with them, and announce them to your ultraconservative family – all without
losing a moment. And if you meet the old Hindi-speaking, Bachchan-liking crook
who stole literally all your money,
the correct thing to do is to kiss him on the cheeks after chasing him to the
verge of a heart attack.
7. If your family then gets a sleazy godman to predict the end
of your relationship, of course you ought to immediately get married just to
spite the lot of them – like the very
next day.
8. If you’re at the registry office and your Significant Other
hasn’t showed yet, but someone brings a note (unsigned and in BLOCK LETTERS) saying
the writer can’t get married to you, clearly the correct course of action is to
walk out and leave the country, not to, you know, call and ask him or her to explain.
9. If your girl dumped you at the altar, so to speak, you must
then quit the country, and every day
thereafter at the same time, call
your country’s embassy to ask if she’s called. Not, you know, look for her on
Fakebook or something. And the people at the embassy have nothing better to do
than indulge you.
10. Bombs in trains explode with rolling balls of fire like
napalm, not shockwaves and shrapnel.
11. If you are an alien from a distant world, clearly you will
fall in love with a human woman. The fact that – as the encyclopaedia The Science In Science Fiction said –
this is considerably less likely than sexual attraction between a woman and a
lobster is irrelevant.
12. There is obviously enough money in robbing blind beggars and
temple collection boxes to finance poster campaigns with multicoloured pictures
asking for god’s whereabouts. And though you know perfectly well how to make
money out of religion, you’d rather rob beggars, etc, rather than lay your
hands on the filthy lucre the (obviously) easy way.
13. If you’re an alien from a distant world who’s a researcher
on earth customs, please do not attempt
to learn anything about Earthlings before landing, like what clothes are, for
example. And if you manage to get back home by the skin of your teeth, the logical
next step is to lead back a tourist party – all of whom are naked – rather
than, you know, put them in clothes or something, even though you know enough to teach them Bhojpuri.
14. Obviously, the best solution to the problem of taking back
your beloved’s voice recordings to your world is a clunky old tape recorder and
a trunkload of batteries and cassettes, not, I don’t know, use a mobile phone
or something. I mean, I’m not an alien, but if I had filched enough money to
afford a poster campaign and new sets of clothes every day, I’d probably have
enough to lay out for a midlevel mobile phone with a voice recorder. But I’m no
alien.
15. And if you’re a young man in Belgium who reappears in
Pakistan a year later, you’ll be wearing the same clothes, with the same
hairstyle and even the same length of beard stubble. Because people totally do
that.
Ah, well, I shouldn’t turn down the opportunity to learn. And
at the earliest opportunity I’ll go watch OMG
again and blame it for not enhancing my education in such wondrous ways.
At this point I’m about ready to go become a godman myself.
Anybody willing to become my disciples?
No, I didn’t think so.
"A film that works in its first half and falls off the cliff in its second half"
ReplyDeleteI think that can be said about the last 5 or 6 films I've seen in a movie theater. With the big budget ones I've seen, I figure it has to be because the set-up is cool, someone gets their film green lighted, but the big Hollywood producers insist on tried and true formula ideas for the climax.
I don't know whether that would apply here or not. It might. The people who produce these things might believe audiences insist on certain tropes.
Anyway, I read a book about godmen in your part of the world. Lots of pot ash involved... whatever that is.
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ReplyDeleteBtw ..... check this link http://www.hindustantimes.com/entertainment/tabloid/aamir-tried-to-stop-akshay-s-oh-my-god-offered-rs-8-crore/article1-1299393.aspx
ReplyDelete