Corporate evil is afoot in a flashy, vaguely futuristic boardroom somewhere in India: Mr Malhotra (Kay Kay Menon), industrialist extraordinaire and despiser of all things green and leafy, wants to build a bridge. The structure would drastically shorten driving time to the city from his chemical factory—propped conveniently on the shores of the lake into which it has long been dumping its toxic wastes—and save him a bundle. But there’s a problem. In the bridge’s path lies a settlement of Sikhs—the Kartar Singh colony—and there’s a certain Mrs Dhillon (Amrita Singh), who refuses to make way. The colony had been set up by Dhillon’s late husband, the first Sikh to be trained by Shaolin monks—among other feats that son Aman (Tiger Shroff), a martial arts teacher and something of a joke in the community, is sick of hearing about. And there’s also this tree—a wish-granting, 200-year tree whose trunk is branded with the Sikh khana—near the colony that’s deeply important to the locals.

When all his attempts to convince Dhillon and her people amount to nothing, Malhotra hires the mercenary Raka (Australian wrestler Nathan Jones) to head on over one night and chop down the tree. Who else should catch him in the act but Aman? The two grapple mightily in the rain, and somehow, in the process—presumably through a combination of lightning and divine intervention—Aman develops instant super-powers. He overpowers Raka and leaves him lying in a muddy puddle somewhere.

His newfound powers—including super-strength and the ability to fly and heal—make Aman something of a celebrity in the colony, labelled the Flying Jatt. Not only are his mama and brother (Gaurav Pandey) stoked, but it also means he’s in with the ladies, although he really has eyes for just one, the chirpy Environment Science teacher Kirti (Jacqueline  Fernandez). But the fun and games can’t last forever: Raka is back, having derived powers of his own from the sludge he was buried in (super-abilities are ten a penny in this world, clearly), and let’s just say, he’s not looking happy.

There’s definitely potential in the concept of a “desi” superhero, particularly an inept one, and some moments in A Flying Jatt do capture that kind of contextual quirkiness, particularly in the film’s first half: it’s there in Mrs Dhillon’s unbridled enthusiasm at Aman’s discovery of his powers—hunkering down to watch superhero movies for inspiration, ordering him out of bed to do some good deeds (including the  occasional house-cleaning and veggie-purchasing for her own benefit); or in the way our hero is such a stickler for the rules that he patiently waits for traffic lights to change even whilst airborne. More of this would’ve been good. But choreographer-turned-director Remo D’Souza, who shares writing credits here with Tushar Hiranandani, cuts the good times short and abruptly changes tone, leaching the film of its initial buoyancy and heading into a poorly-conceived and overly-preachy second half—basically going from a pretty enjoyable Indianised spoof on superhero clichés to a prolonged, none-too-effective lecture on pollution, within a span of minutes.

What also nags is the general lack of subtlety in A Flying Jatt that makes the entire production feel very clumsy, giving the impression of being targeted at a younger audience—there’s nothing “sub”, for instance, about the environmental subtext, foisted upon us at every possible opportunity. That effort comes to a head in a strange moment towards the film’s end where the screen suddenly fills with a quote that reads, “Everything has an alternative except Mother Earth”, credited to the director. What is that even? Who does that? And of course we have the hilariously expository dialogues, villains hamming it up to ridiculous extents, and the stereotypical portrayal of our colony-dwellers, particularly Singh’s character, turned up several hundred cartoonish notches. Which makes the film’s latter attempt to rail against the many Sardar jokes that have routinely been directed at the Sikh community (and which could apparently be banned online soon) just a little bit problematic.

Then there’s the blatant ripping off of Hollywood blockbusters. Now, the line between creative inspiration and plagiarism might be a thin one, but it does exist, something D’Souza would’ve done well to remember when copying distinctive elements and even entire scenes on occasion from films like Spider-Man, the X-Men, Superman and even Avatar. In this day and age, how did he think he was going to get that past viewers?

The makers of A Flying Jatt also appear to have skimped on the budget for production design and special effects, both laughably poor in quality. The sets are flimsily constructed and scenes with our hero mid-flight look like the sort of amateurish green-screen stuff they used to have back in the day when CGI was in its infancy. Case in point is a climactic fight that takes place in outer space that is just a touch more polished than the kind of visuals you’d expect to see in the

Superman films of the Christopher Reeves era, but still pretty awful given the kind of finesse that present-day digital tools have made possible to achieve.

Perhaps if someone else had been cast in the lead role, there might have been a small sliver of a chance of redemption for the film—Shroff, now three films in, is still just as awkward and unconvincing as he was in his debut, and no amount of slinky dancing or impressive martial arts demos can mask the fact that the man simply cannot act. But even he isn’t as bad as Fernandez, who serves up what is possibly the most annoying caricature of a performance out of all the films she’s done—fluttery, high-pitched and downright insufferable. There are absolutely zero sparks between them, making the romantic angle entirely superfluous, a mere vehicle for the numerous song-and-dance sequences that have been plugged in at regular intervals. While the enormous Jones’ stint is limited to the occasional, and often-illegible, growl, Singh and Menon, otherwise reliable performers, are just going through the motions here, not too fussed, cashing an easy paycheck.

If it’s desi superheroes you want, you’d fare better hunting down a copy of the unintentionally hilarious Desi Spiderman, or the absolutely sublime Supermen of Malegaon than wasting your time with this particular vigilante. Although I have a sinking feeling we haven’t seen the last of him yet.