This is “Hey kids, let’s put on a show!” writ very large.
The emotional impact is augmented further by the fact that Bollywood director Reema Kagti’s charmer is based on actual events. The often rowdy result is thoroughly entertaining.
The year is 1997, the setting the primarily Islamic community of Malegaon, in the Nashik District of India’s Maharashtra State. A buoyant introductory montage, set against Sachin-Jigar’s jaunty score, introduces the story’s primary characters as they begin a typical day of work.
Nasir (Adarsh Gourav, second from right) tries for the best possible shot, while wielding
the camera with assistance from friends, from left, Shafique (Shashank Arora),
Nadeem (Ammol Kajani) and Farogh (Vineet Kumar Singh).
Wedding videographer Nasir (Adarsh Gourav), who operates out of a video parlor run by his older brother, is quick with an entrepreneurial hustle but prone to placing bets with money he doesn’t have. He’s often assisted by the handsome Nadeem (Anmol Kajani).
Local journalist Farogh (Vineet Kumar Singh) composes poetry and aspires to become a screenwriter. The doleful Shafique (Shashank Arora), who works a loom in a sweatshop factory, never seems to smile.
Nasir’s staunchest advocate is Shabeena (Muskkaan Jaferi), who always has an encouraging word; alas, he doesn’t love her. Instead, he has long been sweet on Mallika (Riddhi Kumar), but her father never would allow his daughter to marry so lowly an individual. Even so, the two often sneak off to be together.
Nasir, Nadeem, Farogh, Shafique and several of their friends always are first in line, when a new Bollywood hit reaches their town. But Nasir, a rabid movie fan, takes it a step further; he screens silent films by Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton in the back room of his brother’s store ... but very few people come.
His “solution” is wildly audacious. Armed with a pair of VCRs, he blends the best scenes from those silent classics with kung fu footage from Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan movies, stitching the results into a sorta-kinda story laden with comedy and action. The result is a smash hit with the locals, who swarm the makeshift theater for repeat viewings ... until police officers smash everything, and warn Nasir to stop pirating.
Although dismayed by the ruins of his brother’s business, Nasir remains undeterred. His next scheme is even more brazen: a shot-for-shot, micro-budget remake of 1975’s Sholay, one of the biggest Bollywood action hits ever made, using solely local talent. He’ll call it Malegaon’s Sholay, in order to evade claims of piracy.
Farogh loves this plan, since it will allow him to write the script ... but no, Nasir points out, there’s nothing to write, since they’ll simply follow the original movie’s template.
Our next movie will be an original, he promises.
Nasir gathers all of his friends; equipment is begged and borrowed, rental fees usually waived when he promises the vendor a role on screen. The subsequent casting audition montage, a staple in such films, is particularly droll here; most of these people couldn’t act their way out of a paper bag. Nasir doesn’t care; he has his eye solely on the final result.
Additional funding comes via stop-the-action product placement, which infuriates Farogh.
A key role must be played by a woman, which is impossible given Malegaon’s modest, hijab-adorned female community. The solution comes from the bolder touring actress Trupti (Manjiri Pupala), who agrees on condition of 1,000 rupees per day. She shows up for a location shoot with a young child in tow, and is insulted to discover that her “dressing room” is a rickshaw.
But it quickly becomes clear that her haughty manner also is a performance; she’s barely getting by, just like the rest of Nasir’s crew and “actors.” She also catches the eye of the forlorn Shafique, who immediately falls in love with her, knowing full well that his chance of success is as unlikely as his long-held dream to one day fly in a plane.
Kagti and his cinematographers — Swapnil S. Sonawane and Parnil Vishwasrao — favor tight close-ups and tracking shots during the DIY hustle and bustle of Nasir’s doggedly frantic and often improvised shooting schedule.
To everybody’s surprise, the resulting film is amazingly popular.
Several years pass, during which Nasir becomes an auteur megalomaniac while making more copycat movies. When reminded of his earlier promise to Farogh, Nasir objects. Why do an original story, he insists, when so much money can be made by mimicking earlier movies?
“The writer is the boss,” the insulted Farogh replies, before storming off to seek his fortune in Mumbai.
By this point — and despite this film’s larkish tone — we’ve become emotionally invested in all of these rag-tag characters; this rupture, precipitated by Nasir’s ego, is painful. Most of his friends drift away; worse yet, he soon discovers that the local appetite for his mirror-image parody movies isn’t as enduring as expected.
Matters of the heart take over, and it looks like everybody will wind up where they started.
But then a fresh crisis erupts, with wholly unexpected results. Suffice to say that the never-say-die Nasir hatches one final bodacious scheme.
The charismatic Gourav displays plenty of spunk and spirit. Even when Nasir becomes almost intolerable, his persistence never ceases to be endearing. The rift with Farogh is heartbreaking, because Singh persuasively sells this would-be writer’s belief in writing as an honorable craft.
The two characters represent the age-old clash between commercial compromises and artistic purity. The goal, as always, is to find a project that allows both to thrive.
(George Lucas has made no secret of how he strip-mined 1930s Flash Gordon serials, Japanese Samurai films, the work of mythologist Joseph Campbell and much more, when he wrote and directed Star Wars.)
Gourav and Singh notwithstanding, Arora’s sweetly despondent Shafique — a constant misfit presence throughout — takes center stage in this film’s heartwarming third act.
Varun Grover’s script is strongly inspired by 2008’s Hindi documentary, Superman of Malegaon, which profiled the actual Nasir Shaikh and his local cohorts; this film therefore feels like a circle being completed.
Superboys of Malegaon deserves far more exposure than it’s likely to get during a modest theatrical rollout that begins today. I hope a streaming service brings it greater awareness, down the road.
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