Superboys of Malegaon: A super hit!

Superboys of Malegaon (2024) • View trailer

Four stars (out of five). Rated PG-13, for occasional profanity

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang

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.

 

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).

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.

 

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.

The White Tiger: An impressive roar

The White Tiger (2021) • View trailer

Four stars. Rated R, for violence, sexual candor and considerable profanity

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 2.19.21 

There’s a trainload of rage in this thoroughly engaging film.

 

During their initial outing, Ashok (Rajkummar Rao) and his wife, Pinky Madam
(Priyanka Chopra), are surprised to discover that their new driver, Balram (Adarsh Gourav)
hasn't the faintest idea how to get where they're going.

Director/scripter Ramin Bahrani’s adaptation of Aravind Adiga’s award-winning 2008 novel has been described as a cross between Slumdog Millionaire and Parasite, and that’s reasonably accurate. But this film has the added benefit of a caustic sense of humor — darker than dark — and its protagonist’s sharply observed understanding of the way in which globalization has exacerbated the cruel divide between India’s upper and lower castes.

 

Our “hero,” Balram (Adarsh Gourav), is introduced in a position of prominence. He has become that which he always hoped to attain: an entrepreneur. This isn’t an easy achievement in his country, as he explains; an Indian entrepreneur must be “…straight and crooked, mocking and believing, sly and sincere, all at the same time.”

 

Balram narrates his saga by way of a letter written to Chinese Premier Web Jiabao, on the eve of his visit to India in 2010. “American is so yesterday,” Balram begins. “China and India are tomorrow.” (If American viewers respond to that introduction with unease, I’ve no doubt that was Bahrani’s intention.)

 

Balram (played, as an adolescent, by Harshit Mahawar) grows up in the poor village of Laxmangarh. He’s a bright, curious and perceptive child: that rarest of jungle creatures, a “white tiger,” symbol of freedom and individuality. But his intelligence opens no doors in a feudal hamlet under the thrall of a big city coal baron dubbed “The Stork” (Mahesh Manjrekar) and his thuggish elder son, “The Mongoose” (Vijay Maurya). They extract one-third of the already meager rupees the villagers earn.

 

Balram watches his father literally work himself to death, while the family elder — Granny Kusum (Kamlesh Gill) — berates the man, for not laboring harder.

 

This mind set — the adult Balram explains, in voiceover — is due to the most insidious of India’s “inventions”: the rooster coop, where caged birds silently watch their fellows being slaughtered, while calmly waiting their turn. This characterizes India’s “dark” under class: not merely trapped in a perpetual cycle of poverty and servitude, but trained over centuries to accept that it should be that way.

 

As the adult Balram further observes, “Election promises had taught me how important it is, not to be a poor man in a ‘free’ democracy.”