ENTERTAINMENT: A new low in entertainment! Lackluster comedy of absurdity!! [1.5/5]

Do not judge a book by its cover and a film by its title, especially if it stars Akshay Kumar. Writer duo Sajid-Farhad’s first outing in direction ENTERTAINMENT sees a new low in the promised territory. With humor largely based on word-play one liners, plot that hardly believes in being logical and performances having tough time to justify even calling them one; it is just another slap-stick, mindless & lackluster comedy of absurdity Akshay Kumar is known to be a master of in recent past. Of course, a lovely addition of a cute dog in the plot is something new & unusual from his rests but that’s it.

Sounding like a film funded and supported by Maneka Gandhi- the famous animal rights activist, ENTERTAINMENT sets a new benchmark in bromance with Akshay Kumar bonding with a rich & wealthy dog smart enough to read books and acts accordingly to defend itself. In a very much Bollywood fashion, Akhil Lokhande [Played by Khiladi Kumar] comes to know of his real father being a Diamond King in Bangkok but till the time he could reach to claim his dead father’s 3000 Cr Empire, a dog named Entertainment has been given all of it in his last will. Rest is how this loyal friend of man wins hearts and after several failed attempts of Akhil trying to kill the dog, the both bonds like any other melodramatic affiliation Bollywood could come up the best.

Sajid-Farhad being a successful duo of writers with more than a couple of 100-Cr films in their kitty, film starts off good with jokes flowing all over; mostly mouthed by TV comic star Krushna playing a partner-in-crime to Akshay. His one-liners that include names of Bollywood actors twisted & linked with the sentences he speaks succeed in tickling you at most but after a point; you don’t really care for him as the mindless plot has already given you much numbness to feel any sensation. Get a flavor of it here so that even you don’t like to buy the tickets, you can have a hint of it…‘I Rajni-can’t believe this’, ‘lag gaya na tujhe A-shock Kumar’, ‘kahaan ja reha hai sonakshi Seen-ha taan ke’ and so on. You may also see it as his extended ‘comedy circus’ act.

ENTERTAINMENT slips off from its track to entertain soon after the intermission when story gets zoomed in to Prakash Raj and Sonu Sood playing Karan-Arjun, overtly emotional villainous brothers with memories of mother holding them together on the lines of Rakhi Gulzar’s character in KARAN ARJUN. Akshay gets into fight mode and then comes the typical Bollywood climax in the hospital where patient is declared dead but punching him hard on the chest in state of rejection could bring him back in life. Medical science has certainly contributed a lot in our happy endings!

Film also doesn’t leave anyone barred from making fun of their caste, colour & creed. So Johny Lever playing the legal advisor named Habibullah constantly faces wrong pronunciations of his name including ‘Gorilla’ ‘Lulla’ and what not! You can hear an ‘azaan’ like sound in the background whenever he’s hurt. At last, it is nothing but a directionless shot to force the ill-shaped meaning of ‘Entertainment’ i.e. hitting the 100 Cr mark anyhow, by any means. As Krushna’s Character would speak, “Iss film se entertainment ki Aasha Parekh ki, toh aapke dimaag ki Anupam Kher nahin’! [1.5/5]