Mithun's social sermon fails

Mithun Chakraborty has worked in hundreds of 'masala' flicks in his more than three decades long career. In the middle of all this, he has also worked in quite a few socially relevant films but they have primarily been festival films or award winning ventures. His recent release ZOR LAGAA KE...HAIYA attempted to fuse the two sensibilities by telling a story that attempted at being a fun outing even though it aspired to deliver a serious message around environment preservation.

However, the idea hasn't worked and though the film did appeal in bits and parts, and that too only in the first half, the second half turned out to be a big yawn. Alas, Mithun's social sermonizing hasn't really enticed audiences, something that is visible with the film running to empty houses.

Of course, director Girish Girija Joshi may have believed that roping in Amitabh Bachchan for a voiceover and Mithun Chakravorty as a spearhead for the film could be a lucrative enough. However, first and foremost that is not really good enough and secondly even Mithun's role hardly adds on to the relevance of the film's plot which deals with saving a tree house made by a bunch of five kids.

CHECK OUT : ZOR LAGAA KE HAIYA and the spirit of conservation 

In fact Mithun's character doesn't add anything at all to the film's narrative and his only contribution is towards the last five minutes of the film. However, even that bit of value addition could have been extracted out of the one of the kids in the story.

Even at the face value, the idea around an entire film centered on saving a tree doesn't sound exciting. Ok, so if a film maker is trying to make a short film for festivals or a documentary then it may still be commissioned. But one has to give it to the producers (Kartikeya Talreja, Basant Talreja) for actually giving their green signal for 100 minutes long feature film to be made on this topic. Where exactly is the audience for such a subject? And how could even that select bunch of audience be enticed enough to walk into a theatre for a movie that doesn't really boast of any star value whatsoever?