PK

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An alien and his boombox

PK is a 2014 Sci-fi comedy Bollywood film, starred by Aamir Khan and Anushka Sharma. It's a satire about religions in India.

On 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 how a local man steal it and runs away, only managing to retain the thief's boombox. The same day, but 50000 kilometers away, in Bruges, Indian journalist Jaggu Sahni (Sharma) mets and fall in love with Sarfaraz Yousaf (Sushant Singh Rajput) , a Pakistani college student. When telling her family about him, her father objects due to their cultural and religious difference and immediately consults a guru, Tapasvi Maharaj (Saurabh Shukla), who has had the 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 the day of their marriage, 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 he meets the alien, who is distributing leaflets searched by the "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 costumes 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 on 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 on the social problem of fraudulent gurus- and take down the man that has her family on his clutches. Little she realizes that the very grateful PK is developing a crush on her...

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Tropes used in PK include:

• An Aesop: having faith in some superior force 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 species communicates via skin contact. so he can gets information by touching other people. Doing this is what convinces Jaggu that he is an honest-to-god extraterrestrial. This 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 gets fully hit for it until meeting guru Tapasvi.
• "Falling in Love" Montage: the number for "Chaar Kadam", where Jaggu and Sarfaraz fall with each other. Meanwhile, the number for "Love Is a Waste of Time" serves as one to PK falling in love with Jaggu.
• Fourth Date Marriage: Jaggu and Sarfaraz intended to have one, but gets cancelled when he fails to appear.
• Hiding Behind Religion: Tapasvi
• 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 of lack of context to interprets what he sees.
• 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
• 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 found 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.