Diljit Dosanjh says "what's up" in the first ten minutes of Super Singh with an accent that sounds like he spent three months in Surrey working at a Tim Hortons before deciding he missed Punjab too much, and if I'm honest, that specific vocal register tells you everything you need to know about the movie's confused geography. It wants to be a Hollywood blockbuster while shooting on sets that occasionally look like they were constructed behind a warehouse in Ludhiana during a four-day rain delay. There is a specific kind of CGI heavy-handedness that Punjabi cinema usually avoids simply by not having the budget for it, but here they decided to swing for the fences with green screen work that makes Shah Rukh Khan's Ra.One look like a documentary. Anurag Singh directs with the kind of frantic energy usually reserved for toddlers hopped up on sugary cereal, cutting from wide desert vistas to medium shots of people yelling in Punjabi with zero regard for spatial continuity. The camera moves constantly, swooping down from cranes and tracking alongside motorcycles as if stillness were a punishable offense.

The screenplay by the same director tries to mash up Spider-Man with local folklore about a winged horse and an ancient medallion, which sounds terrible on paper and is honestly not much better when projected onto a multiplex screen in front of an audience of teenagers eating stale popcorn. Sajjan Singh is a slacker living in Canada until he gets superpowers from a cosmic beam that shoots out of the ground like a glowing blue stalagmite, and from there we get the mandatory training montage where he accidentally throws cars into power lines while trying to learn how to fly in a tracksuit. The humor relies heavily on slapstick involving turbans catching on ceiling fans and elders shouting disapproval at westernized youth, tropes that feel older than the hills surrounding Anandpur Sahib. Dosanjh commits to the physical comedy with the total lack of vanity that made him a star in Punjab in the first place, though some of the reaction shots linger on his bewildered face for at least two frames too long, ruining the punchline before the editors can even get to the cut.

Sonam Bajwa shows up as the childhood sweetheart who is now a fiercely independent lawyer, and she spends ninety percent of her screen time looking exasperated while holding a clipboard or adjusting her glasses to signal high intelligence. The chemistry between the leads is fine, but the script gives them dialogue that sounds like it was translated from a self-help manual bought at a gas station, forcing them to deliver lines about heritage and destiny while wearing clothes that cost more than a small tractor. Pavan Malhotra plays the villain, a generic corporate baddie who wants to steal the world's water supply or something equally cartoonish, and he chews the scenery with such enthusiasm that you almost forgive the fact that his henchmen wear hockey masks in broad daylight. There is a supporting actor playing a local police inspector whose voice was clearly dubbed in a tiny studio with an industrial fan running in the corner, creating an acoustic hollow that distracts every time he opens his mouth to threaten the hero.

Cinematographer Anshul Chobey lights the night scenes in neon blues and magentas that evoke a comic book page dipped in diesel fuel, though the daytime exteriors in Vancouver look grey and washed out, like a cloudy Tuesday in November. The soundtrack features a mix of bhangra beats and generic orchestral swells that occasionally clash when the action cuts from a quiet village porch to a skyscraper explosion involving three stuntmen in green body suits. It is a loud movie, full of glass shattering and boots hitting pavement with a heavy thud that has been augmented in post-production by someone who clearly loved The Matrix a bit too much back in nineteen ninety-nine. When compared to the gritty realism of something like Punjab 1984, this feels like cotton candy left out in the sun—sticky, bright, and melting down the sides of the cone before you can finish eating it.

The underlying themes of identity and responsibility keep getting interrupted by special effects sequences where Diljit fights CGI monsters that resemble overgrown bulldogs with bat wings, which is a shame because the movie actually works best when it slows down and lets its lead actor just sing a sad song by a tractor. Hindi movies have spent decades trying to figure out how to make superheroes work without looking ridiculous, and while Bollywood movies often lean into mythological grandeur, this Punjabi cousin tries to stay grounded in the local village comedy circuit even while wearing spandex under a kurta. That tension never quite resolves itself, leaving you with a patchwork quilt of tones that refuses to sit still in your head after the lights come up. Super Singh is not great, not bad, just there, taking up space on a Tuesday afternoon until something better comes along to replace it on the marquee.