No aspiring desi humor blog is complete without a de rigeuer reference to that film of films, Indian Superman.

There’s a cottage industry on the web of whitefolks reviewing this landmark 1987 movie. I personally liked Stomp Tokyo’s review the best–

You will believe a movie can suck….

Superman is one of those rare movies that manages to offend on every level. It is badly acted, badly directed, badly filmed, and makes no sense whatsoever. And just to add that extra level of offensiveness, the whole project is probably illegal. This Superman, namely the Indian Superman, is a stone cold rip-off of the 1978 Richard Donner film. It steals story elements, special effects footage, and even music from that far superior film. Because the entire movie is in Hindi with no subtitles, we have spent many hours in the Stomp Tokyo Secret Labs deciphering its plot. With the help of specially trained translators (okay, a friend who speaks Hindi) and sophisticated Bad Movie Shielding technology (okay, the pause button and lots of root beer), we have successfully dissected this Holy Grail of bad movies. We present a detailed synopsis and analysis of this 150-minute monstrosity as proof of our dedication, our courage, our insanity.

Don’t miss Stomp Tokyo’s captioned screenshots from the flick.

Separately, Unknown planet walks us through the first few scenes –

The movie starts with thundering music playing over the sight of a cityscape from some advanced alien civilization – hey, wait a minute! That music is from the American Superman movie! So are those special effects shots! Anyway, we soon cut to some new footage, taking place in a room that’s colored and designed like the moon sets were in Amazon Women On The Moon – though this movie isn’t supposed to be a parody. Though the dialogue is all in Hindi, it’s easy to figure out that Jor-El, Superman’s father, can’t convince the planet elders (dressed in bright pink and purple togas) that Krypton is going to be destroyed. So Jor-El and his wife to a space capsule he’s apparently made out of cardboard and aluminum foil, and put their infant son on a foil wrapped cookie sheet on top of the capsule. Funny that when the capsule soon after takes off just before the planet is destroyed, it looks like it’s made of crystal, as if the filmmakers ripped off more footage from the original Superman movie. The capsule reaches Earth and crashes in India with so much force, it leaves a long length of burnt grass in a field. The Kent couple comes by, and is so taken by seeing the baby lying on a bean bag chair, they decide to keep him. They quickly learn what a special son they now have – not only can he lift a car, but he can bend a garden hose in half. About ten years later, the Kents throw a party to show off to their friends the special powers their son Clark has. Clark proceeds to impress everyone by slowly and awkwardly breakdancing to Michael Jackson’s “Beat It”.

Perhaps this is considered to be Dharmendra’s Waterworld? Actually, probably not cuz Waterworld was ridiculed for blowing through a crazy FX budget. Desi Superman’s FX budget was apparently a videotape copy machine – a product found in the backrooms of Indian grocers worldwide.