Aamir Khan’s almost-naked poster for his movie PK caught India's attention. But has the movie lived up to the anticipation triggered by one of most risqué posters from Bollywood? Here is our roundup of the reviews for PK, directed by Rajkumar Hirani, which has Khan playing an alien.
Saibal Chatterjee for NDTV: 5 stars
After an entire year of being subjected to unalloyed trash generated by box office sharks that cannot see beyond their weekend collections, Bollywood enthusiasts who value their intelligence - and their hard-earned money - finally have reason to rejoice. PK is here.
Rajkumar Hirani's first film in five years is a warm, funny and piercingly provocative satire that should blow the blues away. It is the kind of full-blooded but genteel entertainer that should get us all into just the right frame of mind to usher in Christmas and bid adieu to a year that has seen us celebrate ugly excess on all fronts with unseemly glee.
Raja Sen for Rediff: 4 stars
Aamir Khan is exceptional in PK, creating an irresistibly goofy character and playing him with absolute conviction.
PK is no satire -- it's a bit too toothless for that -- but it is a rollicking mainstream entertainer with ambition to evoke some introspection, one with compelling moments and some genuine surprises. Including a humdinger of a last scene.
Rajeev Masand for CNN-IBN: 3.5 stars
Two films may be too few to base a theory on, but it does appear that in Aamir Khan and Rajkumar Hirani, Bollywood has found an actor/director pair committed to telling brave, relevant stories, the sort rarely tackled in mainstream popular cinema. After delivering a well-aimed kick in the pants to our myopic, rote-learning education system in 2009's colossally successful 3 Idiots, the team returns with PK, a film with very big...ahem...testicles. Operating in a country famously over-sensitive about religion, they've made a movie that brazenly ridicules our blind faith in god, and exposes the manipulations of godmen who feed off it for profit.
Packed with sharp dialogue and genuinely funny moments that offset the lack of subtlety, it is easily one of the year's better films. I'm going with three-and-a-half out of five for PK; the director's best since Lage Raho Munnabhai.
Shubra Gupta for Indian Express: 2.5 stars
Laden with so many distinctive tics, the lead character in Rajkumar Hirani’s latest could have been a mess. But Aamir Khan plays PK not only to his strengths, but adds something new: we’ve seen his earnestness several times before, but not artlessness. That lack of guile leads us to believe in PK, and makes the film, up till the seamless first half, a terrific watch.
Post interval, it slumps. The focus, which till then is on a character who intrigues us while interesting things are happening to him, gets diluted by a wholly superfluous romance (and songs, tuneful as a couple are), and a face-off between the guy awash in goodness who asks all the right questions and the bad godman who has all the wrong answers.
Rohit Vats for Hindustan Times: 4 stars
It’s Aamir Khan’s show all the way. It’s amusing to see him make an otherwise ‘absurd concept on paper’ plausible. He is the master of disguise and it’s good to see such a ‘projectionist’ on top of his game. PK will always remain among the most cherished characters in his kitty.
PK is a fun film with proper dose of ‘gyaan’. It’s a film that shouldn’t be missed and it’s brave because it attempts to create a better world. Another winner from Rajkumar Hirani. It would be hard to stop it from owning the box-office as well.