The oldest rule of Bollywood goes like this — when nothing else works, use your image. No script, no part, only Jat!

The Deols have been out of circulation for some time now. Papa Dharam does oddball cameos here and there, bada beta Sunny hardly gets movies to shout in and chhota beta Bobby has been crying out for box-office Help for some time now. The last successful film of all three happens to be Apne in 2007.

Naturally, it had to be We Are Family again for the Deols. And this time they are in no mood to take chances. Yamla Pagla Deewana is not only titled after Dharam paaji’s iconic right-hand-oopar-right-leg-agey song (from Pratigya), it’s almost a two-and-a-half hour audio-visual tribute to the three Deols, with snatches of their famous dialogues, characters and songs peppering the film.

Just to put things in perspective: Even though Sunny is called Paramveer in the film and Bobby is called Gajodhar, in the climax the younger Deol tells his girl — “Jab Dharmendra aur Sunny fight kar rahe ho, toh Bobby kya karega?” Yes, Yamla Pagla Deewana is desperate Deolism. Makkhan maarke.

The plot is Singh is Kinng in reverse. If there a man from a Punjabi village goes abroad to get a wayward Sikh back on track, here a Dhillon (Sunny) comes from Canada to India to straighten out a crooked father-son duo (Dharmendra and Bobby). That the NRI is the bichhda hua beta is, of course, the Apne connection.

Gajodhar would fall in love with Saheba (Kulraj Randhawa) and then the Deols would match their muscles and wit (you are right, muscles mostly) with the girl’s pahalwan brothers (led by Anupam Kher) to win the family over and take the dulhania to Canada where Maa (Nafisa Ali, in a Metro redux) is wetting the pillow with her tears.

Then again this is Deolwood, remember? So Dharmendra looks at a photo of his young self and says: “Jab main jawaan tha, sab ladkiyan mera photo takiye ke neeche rakhti thi.” Sunny keeps flexing his dhaai kilo ka haath and roars: “Itna maar maroonga na dava kaam aayegi na dua.” And when people are fighting around him, Bobby starts dancing to Humko sirf tumse pyaar hai from his debut film Barsaat.

But as one of the rare smart lines in the film goes: “Woh din gaye jab tanki pe chadhne se baat ban jaati thi!” You can’t pack a 2011 film with tricks and trappings that have worked in the 1960s and 1970s with one man, in the 1980s and 1990s with another man and never with the third man.

Yet, the second half is mildly entertaining. Maybe because it’s set in the Deol backyard, Punjab, while Half One happens mostly in Varanasi. Or maybe because the bad guys are the actual fun guys. Kher is in form as the girl’s elder brother who shoots more with his gun than his mouth and Mukul Dev in a standout cameo as the perennially drunk-on-desi brother.

Also, there is an earnestness and honesty in Sunny Deol’s performance which had won the day in Apne and will win hearts here too. Not the tornado grunt that sends the baddies flying but the warmth he exudes, especially when he is dealing with his father and brother.

Dharmendra in floral shirts and clutching bottles with rainbow-coloured liquids takes us back to his horror releases of the 1990s. And watching Bobby Deol play a drunk — it’s difficult to make out in which scenes he doesn’t — is not a very yum-la proposition.

The music by multiple directors seems to be sourced from a shelved Bhojpuri film with one song that goes Pal pal na maane tinku jiya! Also the way Sonu Nigam has completely feminised the original Pratigya song, Mohd Rafi must be yahoo-ing up there.

You need to be a big, strike that off, huge Deol fan to enjoy Yamla Pagla Deewana. Anything else and you could be swearing: “Kutte kaminey main tera khoon pee jaoonga!” The ‘tera’ being the film’s director (Kyun..! Ho Gaya Na, Nanhe Jaisalmer, Vaada Raha) who should be the subject of another mystery movie titled Samir Karnik Ko Picture Kyun Milta Hai?.