PK
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PK is a 2014 Sci-fi comedy Bollywood film, starring Aamir Khan and Anushka Sharma. It's a satire about religions in India.
In India, one unnamed alien (Khan) arrives completely naked to the planet save for a medallion/control remote hung on his neck, only to watch helplessly as a local man steals it and runs away; he only manages to retain the thief's boombox. The same day, some 5,000 kilometers away in Bruges, Indian journalist Jaggu Sahni (Sharma) meets and falls in love with Sarfaraz Yousaf (Sushant Singh Rajput), a Pakistani college student. When she tells her family about him, her father objects due to their cultural and religious differences and immediately consults a guru, Tapasvi Maharaj (Saurabh Shukla), who has had his hands on the Sahni family for years. When Tapasvi predicts that Sarfaraz will eventually betray Jaggu, she, enraged and determined to prove them wrong, immediately proposes to Sarfaraz, who accepts. But on the day of their wedding, Sarfaraz fails to appear, and Jaggu instead receives a letter calling off their relationship, leaving her heartbroken.
Six months later, Jaggu is back in India, working as a TV journalist, when she meets the alien, who is distributing leaflets looking for "missing" gods. When she earns his trust, he tells his story. He was a researcher from another planet until he got stranded. After a series of misfortunes trying to find the robber and adapt to the environment, he eventually managed to get some working comprehension of the local customs with the help of bandmaster Bhairon Singh (Sanjay Dutt) and eventually managed to learn the local language via prolonged skin contact with a local prostitute. He adopts the nickname of PK (the Indian slang for drunkard) after being called that way too many times due to his questions and weird behavior. When he managed to explain his predicament, he was told "only God can help you", so he gets into looking for God, eventually getting to genuinely practice every Indian religion. Then he finally found his remote, but it was in the hands of guru Tapasvi, who refused to giving it back because he claimed it was a "gift from God".
After hearing PK's story, Jaggu decides to help him, since it also helps her to both get a great story - by tapping into the social problem of fraudulent gurus - and take down the man that has her family in his clutches. Little she realizes that the very grateful PK is developing a crush on her...
- An Aesop: Having faith in some higher power isn't bad per se, but using religion to hinder others is wrong.
- Arc Words: "Wrong number".
- Auto Erotica: The "dancing cars" that let PK get clothing and money.
- Bizarre Alien Biology. PK's species communicate via skin contact, so he gets information by touching other people. Doing this is what convinces Jaggu that he is an honest-to-god extraterrestrial. This biological characteristic did get him into trouble, because his attempts to hold any person's hand to get information about the local humanoids was misinterpreted as him wanting inappropriate sexual/romantic contact .
- Can Not Tell a Lie: PK. His species doesn't even need the concept, due to the way they communicate. He eventually learns, at least the Metaphorically True style.
- Crisis of Faith: PK's journey into experiencing every religion in India can be read as a variant of this, but he doesn't get fully hit with it until meeting guru Tapasvi and being swindled and humiliated by him.
- "Falling in Love" Montage: The "Chaar Kadam" sequence, where Jaggu and Sarfaraz fall for each other. Meanwhile, "Love Is a Waste of Time" serves as one for PK falling in love with Jaggu.
- Fourth Date Marriage: Jaggu and Sarfaraz intended to have one, but it gets canceled when he fails to appear.
- Hiding Behind Religion: Tapasvi
- How We Got Here: The film turns out to be a public reading by Jaggu of a book where she told the full story, some time after the events finished.
- Human Interest Story: The sort of stuff Jaggu has to cover.
- Innocent Aliens/Innocent Inaccurate: PK. He doesn't know much about Earth, and for a long time, he also suffers from lack of context to interpret what he experiences.
- Intrepid Reporter: What Jaggu aspires to be. Her boss Cherry Bajwa used to be one back in the day, before falling on the bad side of Tapasvi.
- I Want My Beloved to Be Happy: Despite being very in love with Jaggu, PK decides to help her to reconcile with Sarfaraz by prompting her to call him during the debate between PK and Tapasvi.
- Naked on Arrival: PK
- Poor Communication Kills: This was revealed to be what actually happened between Sarfaraz and Jaggu. The letter she received wasn't intended for her, but for the other bride waiting in the register, and when he arrived late and didn't find her, he read the same letter and thought she was the one leaving him.
- Scam Religion: Tapasvi Maharaj's cult, basically the Indian Hindu equivalent of American evangelical megachurches.