The greatest superpower of cinema is the ability to make us believe again. Jackie Shroff’s little summer adventure, The Great Grand Superhero: Aliens Ka Aagman doesn’t just ask us to believe in flying grandfathers or marauding aliens, it invites us to believe in something far more radical in these times of attention and trust deficit. The film tells us that a wrinkled, mischievous Dadaji can still be the mightiest hero in a child’s universe, and that childhood imagination isn’t childish — it’s the original superpower.

Intelligent, imaginative, but lonely, young Dipu (Mihir Godbole is pitch-perfect) fabricates grand stories to win over new friends in new schools and new towns where his father gets transferred. In his script, his grandfather (Jackie Shroff) is a superhero who fights aliens. The tone is secretive, and Dipu limits the age group to under-18 because he perhaps knows his adventure will not pass the adult scrutiny.

He first sparks the curiosity of the inquisitive Laddoo (Shivansh Chorge is absolutely believable), who mixes the superhero tale with divine intervention. Soon, the entire class is keen to see Dipu’s Dadaji and his prowess. But his grandfather, Jagdish Chandra comes across as a regular pensioner with gastric issues and a mortal fear of lizards. Dipu paints it as a facade to hide his heroics from ordinary mortals, but his friends want to see what the granddad is capable of.

The twist comes when Dadaji learns about his character in Dipu’s story, and he claims he is indeed a superhero. When real aliens appear, Dipu’s tall tales collide with reality, and we get a rush of nostalgia and adrenaline in equal measure. Like the adults in the story who react with scepticism or exasperation, we get to chuckle at the absurdity while secretly rooting for the fantasy to win.

While the child actors hold the centrestage, the good old Jackie brings warmth, humour, gravitas, and his passion for a greener world that makes you want to believe Dadaji really has hidden powers. Launched as the Hero (1983), once upon a time, writer-director Manish Saini uses the star’s history as a campy, comic-book style superhero in Shiva Ka Insaaf (1985) to add a meta-layer, making the believe again theme even stronger.

The film cleverly positions the audience as half-insider, half-outsider to the child’s fantasy world. We’re not fully immersed in the boy’s claims, as his gullible classmates are. Instead, we hover at a slight remove, watching the grand myth-making with adult awareness. This distance is where the satire sparkles.

While upholding the power of storytelling, a diminishing art in a know-all world, the film gently satirises how kids weaponise their imagination for survival — to fit in, mask loneliness, or gain status in a new school. By letting us see the gap between the boy’s epic narration and the mundane reality, it creates delicious ironic humour.

It is hard for a studious boy to make friends. In fact, until Dipu cooks up a story, his classmates wonder if he is an ISI agent. When Dadaji comes up with a soft story about his childhood heroism, Dipu demands something with action and violence, in line with the current trend. While Laddoo is a staunch believer, the doubter-in-chief among his classmates is the son of a nosy local news reporter. The environmental agenda of aliens for a clean India resonates, and when their grievances about their lazy representation in Bollywood come to the fore, it becomes a playful commentary that ties childhood curiosity to the larger theme.

However, the imaginative potential of the first half, where reality and fantasy blur delightfully, is replaced by functional explanations and set-piece escalation in the second, as the makers trade mystery for clarity. As they take a classroom approach, the storytelling becomes a little too straightforward, a message-driven engine. The VFX fireworks try to compensate with spectacle, but they often feel generic and not particularly inspired.

Still, in a genre that’s been wheezing under the weather for years, The Great Grand Superhero arrives as a genuine breath of fresh air.

The Great Grand Superhero is currently running in theatres.