CT Review: One for slapstick lovers

Akshay Kumar’s Entertainment doesn’t profess to be anything but a slapstick comedy, Deepa Gauri

Your ability to enjoy Entertainment, Akshay Kumar’s new movie, is directly proportionate to your ability to act brain-dead at the movies and your ‘innocence’ to laugh at any silliness.
Bollywood’s definition of entertainment, as this movie proves once again, is about appealing to the lowest common denominator. But then, who is to define what the LCD is? Some of the greatest minds of our time (and we are not taking names here) have reported how they relax watching Bollywood’s staple fare.

So for all practical purposes, Entertainment too is set to go places and add to the pride of its writer-directors Sajid and Farhad who already have five films in the INR100 crore club. For the uninitiated, they are the writers of Chennai Express, Himmatwala, Golmaal, Ready, Bol Bachchan etc. Enough said?

To cut a long story short, Entertainment is a dog (Junior) and he has inherited a mind-numbing fortune from his master Pannalal (Dileep Tahil). Don’t ask how and why. Akhil (Akshay Kumar), who describes himself as the illegitimate son of Pannalal, is out to get the money.

After being catty-doggy initially, Entertainment and Akhil join hands to fight the baddies (Sonu Sood and Prakash Raj). In between, there are Mithun Chakraborty, Johnny Lever and Krishna Abhishek trying to make you laugh (and succeeding occasionally) and Tamannaah Bhatia as Akhil’s love interest.

Obviously, it is not the story that matters. The above mentioned Sajid-Farhad scripted films don’t have anything as much as a storyline. They pulled off the 100 crores from us, simply because we were willing to suspend disbelief and laugh, telling ourselves that ‘Bollywood is entertainment, entertainment and entertainment.’

So is Akshay Kumar the ultimate entertainer? Vidya Balan told us that ‘I am the entertainment’ (Dirty Picture) and laughed all the way to the bank. Shah Rukh Khan and Salman Khan offer nothing but ‘entertainment.’ If Entertainment is a test of Akshay’s power to sway the masses with anything numb, let us just say that the ‘Khiladi’ has lost some of his old bite.

What Entertainment lacks (among many other serious assaults on our senses) is a crackling pace (which both Kick and Chennai Express had to a great extent), the ‘we-can-get-away-with-anything’ charisma of the Khans, more original comedy and non-repetitiveness.

It is hard to understand why north Indian actresses who find name and fame in south cinema hardly impress you when they return to their hometurf. Tamannaah, who looks heavenly in Tamil movies, appears ‘I-have-seen-a-ghost’ pale, and has a role that needs zero acting skills. The baddies - Sonu Sood and Prakash Raj – are effective, and the rest of the crew does what is expected – fall down, say unfunny one-liners and make faces in general. Ha, yes, the dog Junior. It is cute and all, but the nonchalance on its face says a lot about the film.

Entertainment raises that oft-repeated question: Has mainstream Bollywood lost its ability to be genuinely creative? Most of its movies are either remakes of trashy south Indian movies or such mindless fare. Is getting into the INR100/200 crore club all that matters? Even if so, can’t our folks be a little more creative?