At the Novelty Magnificent movie theater, where a Double Fun Cup costs only 41 cents, the daily matinee draws a crowd of 1,200 people, who sit for almost four hours to cheer for a movie as if they are in a sports stadium.

They pound their seats. They yell. They wave their hands in the air. They know the ending -- most of the people here have seen the movie "Lagaan" before, maybe once, maybe 10 times -- but the ending doesn't matter. The British always lose the cricket game. The Indians always win. Even after seeing this a dozen times, there's still reason to cheer.

"It's not just about a game," says Nilesh Trivedi, after walking out of the Novelty Magnificent. "It's about the reason behind the game."

Most Americans have probably never heard of "Lagaan," despite the fact that the Indian blockbuster has been nominated for a Best Foreign Film Oscar, played for weeks at the Adelphi theater last spring, was featured at last year's Chicago Film Festival and is now available on DVD. Most don't understand the game of cricket. Most would never sit still for a movie that lasts 3 hours and 42 minutes and resembles a cross between "The Bad News Bears" and "Grease."

And when the Oscars are shown on Sunday, many viewers might stare blankly during the foreign-film category.

But for India, the nomination of "Lagaan" represents something much more than a gold statuette. It could mean the celebration of India's cinema -- one of the world's largest movie industries -- on a global stage.

"Lagaan" is, unsurprisingly, an underdog. Of the five movies nominated, the French film "Amelie" is favored to win.

"I thought `Lagaan' was a reasonably good movie," says Shyam Shroff, who works for the film's distribution company in Bombay. "But I was surprised it was nominated for an Oscar. It's something different for Western audiences. The climax, the cricket game, lasts more than an hour. It's like having an American movie that has more than an hour of baseball."

Yet excess is nothing new for Indian flicks. The film industry in Bombay, known as "Bollywood," churns out about 800 movies a year -- almost twice as many as are made in Hollywood. And these movies, stretching three hours and longer, are almost twice as long as most Hollywood films.

But despite India's long and rich movie history and two past Oscar nominations for Best Foreign Film ("Mother India," in 1957, and "Salaam Bombay," in 1988), no Indian movie has ever won the Oscar. The movies typically are shown only to South Asian audiences worldwide and rarely cross over.

Similar scenarios

Typically, a mainstream Bollywood film features a predictable story line: A love story, a revenge story, a family-trauma story, all set in modern times. Some of the scripts make American soap operas seem absolutely plausible. Twin brothers are routinely separated at birth. Angry young men frequently challenge a corrupt system. Beautiful young women rarely do anything but sing and dance and pine for the film's hero.

And, oh yes, there's the singing and dancing, and plenty of it. Even the horror films in India are musicals.

"Lagaan" is set in 1893. It combines two Indian obsessions: cricket and the colonial past.

The movie tells the story of an Indian village, fighting a drought and British tyranny. A British captain with Jack Nicholson sideburns makes a bet with the village hero, Bhuvan: If the villagers can beat the British in a game of cricket, there will be no land tax -- or "lagaan" -- for three years. But if the British win, the entire region will have to pay triple tax.

Bhuvan puts together a team of 11 men, including a potter, a mute temple drummer, a farmer, a village sweeper from the "untouchable" caste, a wood-utter, a medicine man, a hen-catcher and a fortuneteller.

The captain's sister falls in love with Bhuvan and teaches the villagers how to play cricket. A village woman falls in love with Bhuvan and feeds the team at practice. Bhuvan must choose.

Like most Bollywood films, there is no kissing, no nudity. The actors sing about being in love and occasionally hug, but that is as intimate as the intimacy gets.

"It's a very traditional movie," Trivedi says. "All the ethics there are very much Indian. It does stand a chance at the Oscars, but the Western audiences -- I don't know if they have the same ethics."

The Indian government has decided that "Lagaan," a movie about a tax, should not be taxed, as it is a movie favorable to India. So a ticket at the Novelty Magnificent, the only Bombay theater that has consistently shown the movie, costs as little as 20 cents. That's less than half as much as a Double Fun Cup or a Feast Chocobar or a "heart-begging lip-licking rich pastry."

Hooked on a hero Shiv Shakti, a barefoot 7-year-old, comes to the theater every day, because Bhuvan is his hero. He doesn't go to school. He carries his sandwich in a plastic bag.

Anruddh Pandya has seen the film 30 times, meaning he's spent almost five days of his life, watching "Lagaan." He says this is his movie. He works nights at a computer-graphics firm, and he says he helped make the computerized clouds that at one point roll over the sky in the movie.

But many of the men in the theater who cheer for the rag-tag Indian team are unemployed.

"Maybe this movie is a soothing balm for it," says Trivedi, 28, who once worked at Citibank. The audience members at the Novelty Magnificent say they believe the movie will win the Oscar. They believe this is obvious, although they have never heard of "Amelie."

"Why not?" Pandya asks with a shrug.

Indian pundits mention "Lagaan" in the same sentence as "A Beautiful Mind." Its star, Aamir Khan, gets top billing over people such as Russell Crowe and Denzel Washington.

The movie has inspired long essays. It is shown to corporations, to teach management skills and teamwork. A leading human-resources executive is writing a book with the working title of "Leadership the `Lagaan' Way." One chapter is called "Keeping It Light: The Song and Dance."

A "Lagaan" comic book is sold on street corners, and Scooby Doo billboards from the Cartoon Network are posted all over Bombay, wishing the movie luck at the Oscars. Teenagers in Calcutta recently signed a giant "kurta" -- the shirt favored by Bhuvan -- to send off the film from Bollywood to Hollywood.

Newspapers here argue why the movie should be named best foreign film. And many Indian critics take pains to point out that "Amelie" is too syrupy for most Americans.

Sure, the movie "Lagaan" may be long, but "Gone With the Wind" was 11 minutes longer. Sure, there may be singing and dancing, but American audiences fell for "Moulin Rouge." Sure, the climax cricket game lasts for 1 hour and 12 minutes, but this is necessary, to build suspense.

"Lagaan' is going to get it, 100 percent," says Siddharth Bhoopatkar, sitting in the manager's office of the Novelty Magnificent, who adds that he is too sophisticated to actually cheer during the movie. "Because even in Germany, where Indian movies usually don't do so well, it has done well there, also."