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Star cast: Akshay Kumar, Tamannaah Bhatia, Prakash Raj, Sonu Sood, Mithun Chakraborty, Krushna Abhishek
Director: Sajid-Farhad
What’s Good: Junior – the wonder-dog and his entire canine brethren.
What’s Bad: Everything else. From the poor CG, to the lack of novelty in the story, to the utterly wobbly screenplay with severe continuity and factual errors. Not that I was seeking logic but I was seeking fun which too is too much to ask from this film.
Loo break: If it keeps you away from the movie, it is the best place to be.
Watch or Not?: Entertainment serves trash in the garb of entertaining you. As competent as I think Sajid Farhad are, their filmmaking skills doesn’t reflect their prowess over good writing. Jokes kept flowing thick for the first 15 minutes and everything after that was drab. How many times can you laugh over the ‘Tere toh Jacqueline lag gaye’ (prototype) joke? Akshay doesn’t even near funny as he beats Salman in sleepwalking through roles. If you are solely depending on the dog’s cuteness factor for relishing the film, I would recommend a bountiful experience at a dog show for you. Some films don’t deserve audiences, after 140 minutes of sparse laughs and sheer drudgery, I can safely say Entertainment is one of them and take harebrained to another dimension altogether!
User Rating:
Akhil (Akshay Kumar) is living in abject poverty, doing 4 jobs a day to earn for his ailing father. It turns out that his father has been faking the illness because he isn’t his own son. While tracing back, Akhil discovers that he is the son of Bangkok’s diamond merchant Panna Lal Johri (Dalip Tahil). When Akhil reaches Bangkok he discovers that he must fight the heir of his father Entertainment (Junior) to get the 3000 crore worth property of his deceased father.
Then begins the tussle between Entertainment and Akhil over the property. Who wins is not the story but how it concludes into a warm ending is what must be watched.
Entertainment Review: Script Analysis
At the onset, I will express my respect for the film that the story was kept mostly neat. But one must understand that dialogues cannot alone help the film thrive. And as I have mentioned earlier, the long running joke involving name of actors and actresses is bound to be shortlived. Sample: ‘Jaisi karni waisi Mamta Kulkarni’. Coming to the scenes, the film is replete with scenes of bad taste. I doubt even fans will be pleased to see a very fat Akshay Kumar explaining he needs to lose weight so that rocking his baby doesn’t become a breastfeeding exercise. There is one word for what the film puts you through: despair.
There are such lame cues in the film that it is hard to describe them. The film’s lead lady is a TV serial starlet and throws typical soap opera lines at the drop of a hat. She is affectionately referred to as Star Plus. The villains are named Karan Arjun and every time there is a tiff between the two brothers, there plays the title track of the film which seems to bind them together. I wonder if Junior was aware of what he was getting into, because he seemed the most sensible one of the lot present on screen.
In the first half an hour, the film still attempts to be enjoyable. The questionable basis of how a dog inherits a billion dollar property is something that-must-not-be-asked. All through the film what resonated through my mind was a prayer, spare the poor adorable pooch. This film takes the word dumb as an inspiration. In a scene where Johnny Lever drinks down a bowl of poisonous milk, he is revived by two irons!
Half way through the interval, I was done beyond limit with the film. The second hour was way more atrocious than its first. It’s almost re-living the trauma as I write this. By the last scene, I was drained and even the cute dogs in the frame couldn’t help the crankiness of a viewer, who was needlessly put through too much torture.
Entertainment Review: Star Performances
Akshay Kumar clearly did this film to help friends because I doubt anyone else of his potential will waste himself on a script like this. The actor is quite good at dry humor but he completely sleepwalks through the film. The yardstick of judging Akshay Kumar’s talent is to check his zest in action scenes and even that seemed extremely morose this time. Bro, better roles please!
Tamannaah quite succeeds in what she sets out for. Obviously she is a marked improvement since Himmatwala and Humshakals, but she needs to find better roles where she might have something better to do, beside looking pretty.
Mithun Chakraborty as the girl’s pocket pinching parent is good for what he does but again has the potential of better roles. Less than two weeks back, it was so much fun to watch him and Salman Khan dance together in Kick. The size of the role is immaterial but Mithun had absolutely nothing to do in the film.
Sonu Sood who is referred to as Dabangg’s villain in the film was again a good artist wasted. Sonu do you even remember how brilliant you were in Dabangg? Why this!
Prakash Raj was an improvement since his last stints and though he wasn’t any revelation but probably the Heropanti image of him has finally dissipated out of my mind.
Krushna Abhishek has the memorable bit in the film. He does a good job at being funny but that’s all for him.
Johnny Lever again was completely wasted. He can be better compared to all of the above put together but he leaves the impact of a blink and miss role.
Entertainment Review: Direction, Editing and Screenplay
Sajid Farhad are indeed capable of writing good but the kind of script they have churned out for their directorial debut puts them in a very questionable place. To begin with, the story itself was executed terribly. I won’t call it a bad story, and to make a film with an animal in frame is no easy job certainly. But wasting good actors and having your lead man consistently sleepwalk through roles is something that shows badly on the director. Obviously this isn’t the best debut for the duo and probably a defined hint enough that they must refrain from making films any further.
The songs do stick to you for a while especially ‘Johnny Johnny’ but the rest of the album is forgettable.
Entertainment Review: The Last Word
Entertainment is a painful exercise to sit through and when a cute retriever with all the fuzziness cannot retrieve you from boredom, blame it on the film. Akshay Kumar was almost as bad as his Once Upon Aye Time In Mumbaai Dobaara performance, and that says it all I am sure. I am going with a very kind 1/5 for the film and it’s a gift from a dog lover to all the dogs who appeared in the film.
As for the rest of the Entertainment team, filmmaking isn’t as trivial as they think it is. Slog for it in their next film and probably then there will be some stars for them. As an afterthought, my fraternity will agree, we live a dog’s life tormented by films like this.
Entertainment Trailer
Entertainment releases on 8th August, 2014.
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