Here is a thoroughly enjoyable, big-hearted movie about building a better life through showbusiness. It is a feelgood underdog adventure set in the Indian city of Malegaon, inspired by a real-life situation and by Hollywood’s cherished tradition of let’s-do-the-show-right-here.
The starting point was a 2008 documentary called Supermen of Malegaon that became a sleeper hit for its lovable story about an irrepressible bunch of Bollywood superfans producing DIY spoof-homage versions of their favourites on video. Now here is the full feature film treatment, on the kind of scale its original heroes and heroines could only dream about. Directed and co-written by Reema Kagti, it is a boisterous, knockabout movie all about a band of Bollywood-crazy brothers, which mixes comedy, drama and tragedy but also meditates on the vital importance of unoriginality in the film business.
