Director: Reema Kagti
Cast: Adarsh Gourav, Vineet Kumar Singh, Shashank Akora, Riddhi Kumar
Have I Seen It Before: Nope! Neither have you, probably.
Did I Like It: On first view, I probably have nothing in common with the characters—pulled from real life and based on the documentary Supermen of Maleagon (2008)—in the film. They live in a mostly rural, conservative (likely too conservative) area. They dream of making movies. Through a series of misadventures and increasingly desperate turns of fate, they resolve to make a cheap, amusing pastiche that owes more to Superman: The Movie (1978) than anything else.
Ahem.
That’s the easy, obvious charm of the movie. These men may come from a place that is unrecognizable to my own experience, but I see myself in them. Roger Ebert once called the movies an empathy machine, and the birth of the Malegaon movie industry feels largely like experience I’ve had in Oklahoma. Twain may have called travel fatal to prejudice, but movies from another place are almost as good. I don’t think I would have had the same close connection to the people of Malegaon by visiting there than I would immersing myself in their story.
That feeling of identification isn’t the only thing the movie has to offer. The performances are good, and their interactions are often quite amusing. It’s a good time at the movies. The movie is not without its flaws, though. It runs a bit too long. One gets the sense that the film is a just on the wrong side of too attached to its documentary source material. Elements of their relationships with one another are introduced—seemingly in the service of authentically depicting their subjects—but never quite connect or properly pay off with the narrative constructed here. It’s early goings, though. By the time you might see the film, it might be a little more pared down and committed to its underlying story.