A plucky crew of India’s working poor, tired of being busted for pirating movies, set out to make their own in the amusing and engaging true-story dramedy “Superboys of Malegaon.”

They’re do-it-yourselfers of the most adorable variety, turning a bicycle with training wheels into a camera dolly and a loom operator in a sweatshop into a superhero in a picture that’s a little “Meet the Fabelmans,” a little more “Cinema Paradiso” and a lot “Be Kind Rewind.”

Nasir is a film fanatic working in his brother Nihal’s Prince Video Parlour in 1990s Malegaon, a little regarded backwater city in Western India. Nasir (Adarsh Gourav) adores Keaton and Chaplin and can’t understand why the locals won’t show up when he puts their silent films on the screen of this “parlour,” which is more a makeshift storefront cinema than a video store.

Who has money for VCRs or DVD players? Shell out a few rupees and watch whatever this parlour or its many competitors are “showing.” Yes, it’s “illegal.” But in a country famous for a century of traveling truck cinemas serving a cast country with few theaters and almost no TV sets, it’s a business model that fits the marketplace.

Nasir shares his love of Bruce Lee movies with the beautiful Mallika (Riddhi Kumar). But can a part time ticket taker at the Prince and sometime wedding videographer support a wife and family? His brother (Gyanendra Tripathi) knows better. Her family doesn’t think so, either.

Nasir watches movies like a student, straining to understand how scenes, close-ups and editing achieve emotional responses. He experiments with framing and shot selection as he shoots those wedding videos.

Being Muslim, he’s learned the difference between films that are chaste and “halal” and those considered too racy for Indian Muslim consumption — “haram.”That’s how he learns to edit, substiuting other scenes — often goofy — for romantic sexuality in the cinema. And that’s how he realizes he has a flair for visual comedy.

When the police single out the Prince Video Parlour for a raid, bribes won’t be enough to bring them back from the dead. They need unique content, big crowds and no raids or fresh bribes. Let’s “make our OWN movies.”

No, this isn’t Bollywood. But with assorted pals pitching in, the kid brother figures he can crank out a parody of an Indian hit for 12,000 rupees.

“Sholay in Malegaol” will “end all this nonsense about ‘piracy,'” he enthuses (in Hindi with subtitles).

His idealistic, prickly older writer-friend Farogh (Vineet Kumar Singh, quite good) will help him come up with a script. Others can pitch in as crew and even as actors. Some are born to be on camera. Will long-suffering weaver Shafique (Shashank Arora, terrific) realize his dream of escaping the sweatshops and acting his way to fame?

They need to find one Muslim woman willing to act, and act without a veil or hijab. The sassy dancer Trupti (Manjiri Pupala, delightful) will do it for a price. And perks — “separate dressing area” and somebody to look after her baby during takes — are a must.

The plot features artistic vs commercial debates between our director and writer, the uncertainty of whether the comedy they’re making will “play” for local audiences, domestic life changes and challenges and all the usual pitfalls of group filmmaking as it’s depicted in movies — some get “rich” and famous, others are misued, cast aside, passed-over.

“Superboys,” inspired by an earlier documentary on this crew’s fledgling filmmaking efforts, is lively and detailed, which helps it move by at a most-unBollywood-like clip. Director Reema Kagti and her screenwriters stuff a lot of story into 127 minutes, even if a lot of it is predictably formulaic.

The “compromises” of movie-making — overruling the poor screenwriter, product placement (Ismail’s Matches!), a desire to make “art” with a message conflicting with “we’ll just make something similar” to that last film after releasing a hit, with amateur mistakes and bruised egos all along the way — are played up. The casting/audition montage sparkles, the “marketing of a cult hit” touchstones are covered. But the all-important “editing” process is pretty much ignored.

That mirrors the “making of” videos that Nasir studies (pre-Internet) to learn how movies are made, what he needs on the set, etc. Yes, it can seem tedius. But the movie’s only half-done when you wrap your last shot, and turning footage into “a film” can be a fascinating and most filmmable process.

But if you love underdog stories of cash-poor outsiders making their mark, in this case filming and releasing movies without Hollywood or Bollywood backing, “Superboys of Malegaon” fills the bill. A tale that touches and tickles and exposes us to the trials of other lives in a very different part of the world, it’ll make you glad you showed up to read the subtitles.

Rating: PG-13, fisticuffs, smoking, some profanity

Cast: Adarsh Gourav, Shashank Arora, Vineet Kumar Singh,
Muskkaan Jaferi, Anmol Kajani, Riddhi Kumar, Anuj Singh Duhan and Manjiri Pupala

Credits: Directed by Reema Kagti, scripted by Varon Grover and Shoaib Nazeer. An MGM release.

Running time: 2:07