Movies will break your heart, kid.
Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:
It’s that time again! Since 1992 my hometown of Indianapolis has presented the Heartland International Film Festival, a multi-day, multi-theater celebration of cinema held every October. Local moviegoers have the opportunity see over a hundred new works in the realms of documentaries, narrative features, shorts, and animation made across multiple continents from myriad points of the human experience. Some participants stop in Indy on their grand tour of Hollywood’s festival circuit; some are local productions on shoestring budgets; and a wide spectrum of claims are staked in the innumerable niches between, projects with well-known actors screening alongside indies with enormous hearts.
Heartland’s 33rd edition runs October 10-20, for which I’ve made plans to catch at least eight films in all (Lord willing). Longtime MCC readers know the rule: every film I see in theaters gets its own entry…
Full disclosure: Superboys of Malegaon was a last-minute addition to my festival itinerary, made possibly by one of my patented “six degrees” rabbit-hole investigations of the seeming interconnectedness of all cinema. Follow:
After loving Andrew Garfield’s back-to-back performances in The Social Network and the first Amazing Spider-Man (disregarding this judge’s low score for the second), I followed him to his next project, 99 Homes, which was the first film I ever saw by director Ramin Bahrani, whose most recent feature film was Netflix’s The White Tiger, which shined thanks in large part to its young leading man, one Adarsh Gourav. Fast-forward to this past September, when I spent a good hour or more reviewing the descriptions and cast/crew listings for every single Narrative Feature on Heartland’s site to check for familiar connections. Eventually I got to Superboys, which also stars Gourav.
Between his name and its capsule summary’s strong resemblance to the warm-hearted Be Kind Rewind…well, here we are. It’s funny how many roads lead to and from superheroes. Little did I know the Rewind similarities would end after a time, while the final twenty minutes would reveal strong ties to another, much larger pop-cultural touchstone — one of the all-time greatest, at least according to my generation of geeks.
In this film-about-filmmaking, which of course means it’s legally guaranteed a Best Picture nomination, Gourav is Nasir Shaikh, a wedding photographer in 1997 who runs a cheap movie theater with his big brother in the poor little town of Malegaon using VHS tapes they buy down at the market. Business is booming after he gets the idea to use two VCRs to create his own supercuts with nothing but action scenes. After the authorities raid the place and trash everything in a zero-tolerance response to movie piracy (think Alamo Drafthouse ushers armed with quarterstaves), Nasir and his friends get an idea: why not make their own movies? Well, in a manner of speaking — their first project is a remake of the 1975 Indian blockbuster Sholay. (No, I’d never heard of it and had to look it up.) Same as Rewind, the cast and crew have very few resources but innovate as much as they can to remake someone else’s movie with the materials and skill sets at hand, and the results bear that out. Nasir cringes in a corner during the world premiere of his feature-film debut, Malegaon’s Sholay. After it’s over, the patrons exit still laughing…and congratulating him. They loved it! It was hilarious! It was an excellent parody! Uhh, sure, he meant to do that!
Nasir is emboldened to see his work validated and persuades everyone to help him make more, but goes overboard when he begins seeing only dollar signs. Superboys swerves from Rewind‘s genteel path into the pattern of many a rock-band biopic — the team’s humble beginnings lead to a tumultuous success that stress-fractures into full-on breakup when egos clash over creative differences and severe paycheck inequity. Then, years later, a third-act crisis inspires everyone to forgive, forget, and reunite for one last ride into that end-credits sunset with one last parody. And this time…it’s personal.
Director/co-writer Reema Kagti (one of the writers of Netflix’s 2023 revamp of The Archies) and her co-writer, comedian Varun Grover, unabashedly celebrate the Magic of Movies with deepest sincerity and community spirit. They didn’t have to search far for inspiration — all this is based on a true story chronicled in the 2008 documentary Supermen of Malegaon. Their fictionalized version, which premiered last month at the Toronto International Film Festival, can be a touch melodramatic at times, but the enthusiasm of all players is so infectious that at times you can’t help overreacting along with them.
Gourav bears much of that weight as the appointed auteur whose innocent dream soon consumes him at the expense of everyone else’s dreams. He’s endured so many tribulations — poverty, business failure, losing the love of his life, begrudgingly entering into arranged marriage — that he never expects a comeuppance until it’s too late. But when he finds a nobler purpose — the chance to make someone else’s dreams come true — only then can the auteur embrace a truer calling. The final hour left me utterly wrecked and smiling as he and the crew stage the finest parody of their lives. It’ll do the same for anyone who’s held a lifelong appreciation of Christopher Reeve and who maintains one of the all-time greatest superhero films is a decades-old gem. Just we all did 46 years ago, once again you will believe a man can fly.
(And you just might have that chance! Unlike some of the other Heartland films I’ve seen, this one already has a distributor — MGM, who’ll be releasing it in some fashion in January before it’s sent to Prime Video later in 2025. Comics fans of a certain age absolutely have to see this.)
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Meanwhile in the customary MCC film breakdowns:
Hey, look, it’s that one actor!: This isn’t a Hollywood movie with access to all the usual character actors, and I can’t fake a background in Bollywood or Tollywood. That said, one cast member besides Gourav has some Western credits: Shashank Arora was a casting assistant on Furious 7 and The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. Here he’s onscreen as Shafique, Nasir’s pal who always dreamed of acting, and of one day riding in an airplane. During the initial awkward “auditions”, he’s quietly despondent as he’s relegated to doing makeup and hairstyling. He’s the one crew member who remains by Nasir’s side even in his nadir, but his dedication and selflessness are rewarded when all of Malegaon shows up for him in the finale.
Shafique’s fate is obliquely foreshadowed in one scene where he’s holding a baby and pointing out an airplane to him, soaring overhead through the blue. Not until much later is it apparent that theirs was, in so many words, a good old-fashioned exclamation of “Look! Up in the sky!”
How about those end credits? No, there’s no scene after the Superboys of Malegaon end credits, which are fairly brief because it didn’t require a visual effects team the size of a small town. But just imagine how this all might’ve looked if an entire plucky town had chipped in and at least learned Photoshop just so they could help out. I suspect many would’ve if they could’ve.