The colourful poster of Zor Lagaa Ke... Haiya! lists either the number of awards the film has won so far or the number of nominations it has notched up. With kids, pranks, a barely recognisable Mithun Chakraborty and the sexy Riya Sen also on the poster, you would like to believe that the Bolly comeback at the starved city plexes would be a nice buffet. Wrong! First-time director Girish Girija Joshi tries his best to capture a heartwarming tale, but falls short.

Zor Lagaa Ke… Haiya! is the story of a Marathi national award-winning sculptor, Sudhir Apte, better known as Ravan (Mithun Chakraborty), and his khatta-meetha relationship with a bunch of kids. They are afraid of the vagrant with “makdi jaise baal”. To keep a watch on him, the kids build a tree-house. All hell breaks loose when Ravan starts sleeping in the tree-house at night. Enmity, however, soon turns to friendship when Bakshisaab of Bakshi Constructions (Gulshan Grover) tries to chop it off. Ravan and the kids gang up to shoo him away.

The film comes laced with the message of social awareness. Save your trees is the slogan. It all gets preachy bordering on the boring with a twist too tame at the end.

Booming music accompanies Ravan’s appearance in the initial frames, but Joshi’s Ravan is not menacing enough. If the reference to “makdi jaise baal” takes you back to Vishal Bharadwaj’s brilliant Makdee with Shabana Azmi’s Chudail sending a chill down your spine, it remains just that — a mere reference. At one point, when Ravan is arrested, another convict is shown wearing the same wig!

Ravan’s plight, his days spent in the jhopdi and his tiff with his son do not evoke pathos. And the relationship of Ravan and the kids that forms the crux of the film sadly proves to be a weak link. (For example, Ravan’s prank of unleashing cockroaches is silly.)

If the film is worth a shot, it is because of the five kids — Karan, Ritesh, Laddoo, Priya and Ram. It belongs to them. Period. Laddoo is the most adorable. Joshi gives them all the fun dialogues. Laddoo’s friends make fun of him saying “Tu toh aise tension le raha hai jaise ke saare kaam tu khud hi karta hai”. They also dress up as Batman, Catwoman, Spiderman, Superman, the quartet of Abhishek Bachchan, Aishwarya Rai, Hrithik Roshan and Uday Chopra from Dhoom:2, Subhash Nagre from Sarkar and Krishnan Iyer MA from Agneepath — all to fight Ravan. Later, Ravan unites with them as encounter specialist Daya Nayak.

Riya Sen is there on the poster, but missing from the film. Well, almost! The Marathi mulgi Chamki, a construction worker, draped in gorgeous silks is Guptaji’s (Mahesh Manjrekar) love interest. The most you get to see of her is in the number that closes the film where she shakes her booty with Ravan, Bakshisaab, Guptaji and the kids.

Oh! And there is Amitabh Bachchan as the voice of the “good-looking tree”.