There’s a certain cute factor associated with babies and dogs.
Even a photograph of the cutest baby or dog sometimes is enough to make you go “aww.” Think of all the silly dog/cat/baby videos on YouTube that have gone viral purely on the basis of their cuteness quotient.
Entertainment is a series of goofy moments with Akshay Kumar and the dog. And the film works as long as Junior, the golden retriever, is part of the proceedings.
The irreverent tone is set early on with crowd-pleasing cameos by Riteish Deshmukh and Shreyas Talpade. While the film doesn’t take itself seriously nor expects us to give it any thought, the jokes are all over-written, with writer-directors Sajid-Farhad trying to pack in maximum puns per minute. This includes having a character who always uses actor names as words in a sentence. If this character forms lines out of movie titles in one scene, another uses TV soap titles just to show us their creativity at the end of Week 1 in Improvisation Class (Introduction to Puns).
But you have to give them points for trying, when other comedy writers are making screenwriting careers out of recycling the stalest PJs. And to be honest, even at a 10 per cent success rate, the film has about 20 mildly amusing moments. Plus dog. Which is more than what passes for entertainment these days.
Luckily, the dog does not talk or perform elaborate stunt sequences. And the creative licence is restricted to the dog’s ability to read an illustrated book and weep at a photograph. The dog is called Entertainment and they refuse to tell us if the canine is male or female simply because that would be too much detail in a film like this.
While it is never easy to have an animal play a part as huge as this in a movie, the makers forget about the titular hero for a few minutes in the second half and this is where things slow down quite a bit.
Prakash Raj and Sonu Sood get to do comedy finally and the two make the most of it as Karan and Arjun, the brothers who have sworn never to fight. And there is also a gag involving Akshay trash-talking a gang of dogs. Kids might love quite a bit of this film.
This escapist entertainer rarely resorts to visual effects (there are a few tacky ones though) and makes the dog perform. You come out wondering what this material could have become in the hands of a Farah Khan.
Entertainment ends up in the league of weaker David Dhawan films, but we are likely to cheer for any content that tries to stay away from the hero-worshipping remakes churned out these days. Especially if there’s a dog in the lead.
