Brazil showed us a couple of weeks ago how you can have the highest-grossing film of the year also be a respectable and artistically interesting film and now India does the same with PK. Not only is it the most commercially successful Indian film ever made, both domestically and in international markets, it also happens to be a courageous film that pokes fun at religion in an inventive and intelligent manner.

PK, which apparently means drunk, is a nickname given to the protagonist by earthlings who don’t realize that he is really an extraterrestrial visiting our planet. Moments after arriving on Earth, his sole possession, a necklace with a pulsating gem that serves as a remote control for his spaceship, is stolen from him. His desperation to recover it, combined with his complete ignorance of how human society works, leads him to seek assistance from the many religions prevalent in India with predictably hilarious results. Along the way, he befriends Jaggu, a television reporter who realizes that he would make for a wonderful news story and promises to help him in his quest.

It’s the familiar tale about an alien being a fish out of water on Earth with PK’s driving motivation of going home at least as old as E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial. That it’s set in India does give it an added dose of freshness, making old jokes like his confusion over how money works feel new again. What really cements this as a film that deserves to be taken seriously is that it aims most of its barbs squarely at the complicated religious landscape of India, a feat that even mainstream films in Western countries hesitate to do. These range from the relatively safe but still blasphemous claim that all religions should be the same as the divisions between them are man-made to dangerously provocative hand grenades that imply that all forms of organized religion exist only to fleece their worshippers and enrich the leaders. It’s especially shocking that the film is brave enough to direct most of its criticisms squarely against Hinduism, the dominant religion in India, given the current political landscape in the country.

I’m particularly impressed both by how deft it is at gently easing the audience into what is frankly a rather atheistic message and how self-aware it is in lampshading its deliberate use of the technique. Rather than accuse the religious leaders of being maliciously deceptive at first, PK merely believes that they are misinformed, that they have dialed the “wrong number” to God. Jaggu knows better of course but goes along both because it makes for a more amusing story, especially as a meme that is easily spread, and because it is less offensive. The tone throughout the film is never acrimonious. It mocks religious leaders but never rages against them.

Both the plot and the humor can be said to be simplistic, though it was still intelligent enough to surprise me more than once. Its major downside is that it tries to cram in too many ideas and lets mediocre ones go on for too long, such as PK’s silly attempts to grab a woman’s hands. It could be greatly improved with some aggressive editing. But even things that I normally expect would annoy me worked reasonably well. Like all Bollywood movies, it has the obligatory song and dance routines but once again this film shows off how smart it is by making the very first one a traditional romance routine but then plays up the rest for their comedic value. Its aphorisms, usually another annoying element in films that try to be wise, are both non-obvious and rather amusing.

Aamir Khan exhibits plenty of charisma in the leading role and it seems impossible to believe that he’s like 50 years old. Anushka Sharma is gorgeous and more interestingly, the character she plays is a shrewd and well-educated modern woman who displays plenty of agency. Like many Bollywood films, its use of color is excellent and productions values throughout are high. It’s worth noting that its director Rajkumar Hirani has a reputation for repeatedly breaking box office records in India and I’m certainly interesting more entries from his filmography.

It can’t be denied that this is a film that is designed to appeal to the mass market and feels like it, down to the heavy-handed emotional manipulations and the heart-tugging romantic confrontation that is its finale. But it’s clever enough, creative enough and courageous enough that it wins my respect all the same. I’m frankly rather shocked that while it has garnered its share of religious protests, both society at large in India and the government seem broadly supportive of it, in spite of its strongly transgressive message. Something like this would be unimaginable in Malaysia and it makes for yet another grim reminder of how underdeveloped and oppressed our local arts scene is.