Superboys of Malegaon movie review: Reema Kagti's film is hugely entertaining

Films are a heavily gated community. And that’s what some men, more like super-boys, attempted to break, without paisa, and with passion alone—using cycle for trolley shot, cart for crane, parodies for scripts, wedding-video for camera

Superboys of Malegaon
U/A: Biography
Dir: Reema Kagti
Cast: Adarsh Gourav, Viineet Kumar Siingh, Shashank Arora
Rating: 4/5

Superboys of Malegaon is a hugely entertaining film, about films. Which also obviously translates to fine direction, writing, performances, and everything else that follows. 

But that’s not why this movie is so significant. It is set over three timelines; namely, 1997, 2004, 2010. That makes it more contemporary than ‘period’, as it were.

And yet, given the same timelines, it’s hard to find a chosen subject, hence film that, perhaps even unwittingly, captures/catches the exact cusp of history, of the screen, so to say. 

Venture to the right of that time-setting, i.e. the world past 2010? 

You’ll be right inside a mediascape, as we are now, with almost as many producers as there are consumers of homegrown content—through smartphones and their handles, on user-generated platforms/social-media, with a direct audience, anywhere between 100 to millions.  

Switch to its left, as we are in this film, and had been since the Lumiere Bros invented cinema—you’re surrounded by artistes and wannabes, struggling to film their stories. Because technology is inaccessible and expensive. 

Films are a heavily gated community. And that’s what some men, more like super-boys, attempted to break, without paisa, and with passion alone—using cycle for trolley shot, cart for crane, parodies for scripts, wedding-video for camera… 

Thus, creating a nano movie-industry of their own—some six hours off Mumbai, that is its entrepreneurial/infrastructural capital, after all. 

These men, as per the title, were from Malegaon. Which, as the movie’s opening slate states, is a “small town of India.” As against a gaon, or village. Who are these men, though? 

TBH, not very different from blokes in Bombay I gladly report on, for a living—fun-loving folks, with immense hustle inside them, to dabble in such an exasperating/exacting medium, where the best of arts, science and commerce converge; all of them being equally important. 

Only budget in their pockets may differ. The sense of wonder is the same. 

This is how, you can instantly tell, director (Reema Kagti), writer (Varun Grover), manage to lens (Swapnil S Sonawane), with such seamless, unpretentious warmth, empathy and energy—the true story of cinematographer-director Nasir (Adarsh Gourav), writer Farogh (Vineet Singh), aspiring actor Shafique (Shashank Arora), and others.

Script flows with rhythmic ease. As do the dialogues. Actors get their characters, perhaps, better than any they’ve played so far. The chroniclers, in a meta sense, are somewhat the subject themselves! 

This is rare. And quite different from, say, Boogie Nights (1997) in Hollywood, or Miss Lovely (2012), from Mumbai—that seemed more the outsider’s gaze on a low-budget movie industry.

Or, for that matter, this film’s producer Zoya Akhtar’s directorial debut, Luck By Chance (2009), that was more about showbiz and stardom. Rather than something as simple as just wanting to make frickin’ movies—whether or not for a full-time profession! 

The most immediate reference point for Superboys of Malegaon is, obviously, Faiza Ahmad Khan’s documentary, on the same subject, Supermen of Malegaon (2012), that was firstly on the making of a film, i.e. Superman of Malegaon. 

Although watched it long ago, I’ve vague but fondest memories of that movie. Some of it also, sort of, to do with the context the doc provided to the town of Malegaon itself—running on a power-loom industry, riven by religion, with a river dividing two communities. 

Malegaon is a Muslim-majority small town. Such aspects can at best slip in as a sub-text in this fiction-feature.

My favourite moment, I recall, from Faiza’s film was the shot of Superman, as in actor Shafique, jutting out of a pole from the back of a truck, to suggest he’s flying! It plays out, as hilariously, in this film. 

This might well have you ask: Why make a feature, when a doc you can’t top, already exists, around the same characters, equally humanised, already? Well, you can see why. Not that I should need to explain. 

Just observe the beautifully running theme, on unrequited love, in this film, that non-fiction probably can’t achieve. Or, aspects of selfishness of the director-lead, or the natural jealousy of his peers.... So much better to show than tell. Just more visceral.  

Think I first read about Malegaon’s film industry in writer Manu Joseph’s fab feature titled, Parallel Cinema, in Outlook magazine, ages ago. Must’ve come across other references, even clips of ‘Mollywood’ super-hit, the send-up of Sholay, as well. 

And that’s what I compared Ram Gopal Varma’s Sholay (1975) remake, Aag (2007) to, in its review then. A leading film industry figure was most offended by that analogy, for an exaggerated put-down. 

Think she might change her opinion, witnessing the courage, in this picture, with which the super-boys of Malegaon put together that parody. She might now read it as a compliment. 

I’ve seen Superboys of Malegaon twice, already—once on the big screen; second time, on my laptop. The distinction between OTT and theatres, in that sense, is inherently overrated, once you have time/money to spare. 

A good film is a good film. Period. This would work just as well in Nasir’s Prince Video Parlour in this movie, or Malegaon’s Darshan Talkies, nearby. 

It should inspire generations. Because if blokes in the ’90s could do what they did? Anybody can. Indeed, everybody does, in their own ways, anyway—on YouTube, TikTok, Instagram… 

*YUCK  **WHATEVER  ***GOOD  ****SUPER  *****AWESOME

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