Entertainment

Akhil Lokhande (Akshay) is a struggling guy who works various odd jobs to fund the treatment of his sick father. He loves a TV serial actress Saakshi (Tamannaah) but can’t marry her since her father (Mithun Chakraborty) wants a rich husband for his daughter. Until one day he finds out that his real father is a billionaire in Bangkok and he is heir to a 3000 crore empire after his death. Akhil with his buddy jugnoo (Krishna) lands up in Thailand to claim his right when they find out that his late father has named someone else as his heir and this heir turns out to be his favorite dog named Entertainment…

Entertainment is a canine adventure of slapstick kind. Making their directorial debut, the dialogue writer duo of Farhad-Sajid leave no stone unturned and no pun unspoken in their first film. The film boasts of a leave-your-brains-at-home kind of humour and succeeds to a point. There is more verbal humour here than all Sajid Khan movies combined.

The first half is a gagfest and the battle between man and dog results in some hilarious sequences. No possible pun for dogs and Bollywood has been spared and they have also been repeated for good measure. However the laughs dry up after a while and the repetition gets tiring. The second half sees an all familiar set-up for the climax and the film does pick up some pace and thankfully some humour in the latter part.

Akshay Kumar has done few great comedies in his Hera-Pheri days but his recent outings have been mostly drab. Entertainment gives him ample scope to show-off his comic timing and there are flashes of the old hilarious self after a long time. There is also a homage to the horror story scene from Kishore and Shashi Kapoor starrer Pyar Kiye Ja wherein Mahmood and Om Prakash play out a classic hilarious scene. The scene doesn’t work as well here though. Krishna Abhishek as Jugnoo gets a lot of punny lines and he makes the most of them but his character gets annoying after the initial laughs. However Johnny Lever as Habibullah is reminiscent of the classic Johnny and he shows that his comic abilities have still not waned since the yesteryears.

Tamannaah gets to act finally after her two initial outings in Sajid Khan disaster vehicles, though she hardly makes an impression here either. She is easy on the eyes but her dialogue delivery is jarring. Sonu Sood and Prakash Raj play the baddie brothers and they try to do justice to the no-brainer lines they have to work with. Just like Rishi Kapoor in Yash Raj movies, it seems Mithun Chakraborty is the only ‘father’ available to act in non Yashraj movies and he does the same job he has done in umpteen movies now.

The whole movie gives you the 90’s Govinda-David Dhawan feel and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. There are enough laugh out loud moments but the gags get repetitive after a while and the puns get one too many. That combined with the tacky special effects make this an average fare. But make no mistake it’s no fault of the dog. He does his job ever so well. Alas, it’s the men.

Hindi, Comedy, Color