There are the odd moments of inspired humor – all crude – between the three senior actors, but for the most part they’re wasted.

Three dirty old men `leching’ at a pretty young thing is what ‘The Shaukeens’ sets out to show. If it had stuck to its guns, made its threesome more interesting, and the girl less ditsy, this remake of Basu Chatterjee’s ‘Shaukeen’ (1982), would have done its job.

The Shaukeens improves substantially in the second half when it becomes more about Akshay and less about the buddies. In fact Akshay earns the film an extra star.

Watch it only if you are an Akshay fan. He’s does not have a screen space of more 20 minutes in this 124-minute-long movie but when he is there, he makes his presence felt.

Whenever Akshay appears on screen, The Shaukeens transforms into another movie — one that’s substantially more comic, cheeky and winsome — it’s the one I enjoyed the most, it’s the one I wished I had come to see.

The leading lady of The Shaukeens ditches her boyfriend because, in her words, “he made fun of my creation and called it stupid and obnoxious”.

That is it: those are the very adjectives that would best describe this unfunny, eminently avoidable film.

This film has no soul and no character. It’s time waste, paisa waste!

The Shaukeens is a lame, dunce, dis-satisfactory and a stupid film at its core that is so tedious and flat that you almost abhor your time at the cinema. If you can tolerate 30 minutes of Akshay Kumar making fun of himself and his colleagues by making funny faces, you can take a trip for this. But for me, it was a disappointing story of how we lost an intelligent filmmaker to fat paychecks from fancy production houses. There can’t be a better reason why someone as intelligent as Abhishek created something so glaikit.

Director Abhishek Sharma gave is the entertaining Tere Bin Laden, but sadly The Shaukeens is nowhere close to it. Inspired by Basu Chatterjee’s Shaukeen (1982) this film loses steam very quickly. The rehashed plot where Akshay Kumar plays himself is funny in parts but eventually ends up going nowhere.

It’s a shame that film after film reeks of uninspired writing and lazy filmmaking. Are we really this bereft of ideas that we can’t even replicate the success of a film that once worked?

Bollywood is getting unapologetic. That’s fine. But what is a worrying factor is the ‘care-a-damn’ attitude that comes with it. The paying public cannot be taken to be such idiotic fools that they will digest any trash dished out in the name of film-making.

Willing to ignore the crassness and take the film for the genre is actually belongs, you might actually find enough laughs.

The Shaukeens is light-hearted comedy with some really good humorous scenes that will tickle your funny bones. Overall, the film leaves a pleasant feeling and is stress-busting. So go along with your family and friends and enjoy this hilarious caper this weekend.

In the end, director Abhishek Sharma (Tere Bin Laden) gives us a fast food version of what was a very charming and humorous film. Go for it if you have the stomach!

I don’t really have much more to say about this one except that I had to keep comparisons with my all-time worst film ever, *Buddha Mar Gaya * at bay. And it wasn’t the easiest task to do that.

A tedious film, watch if you are a fan of Akshay Kumar and can turn a blind eye to blatant objectification of women

The Shaukeens is fun to watch only if you leave behind the logic and turn a blind eye to many bad things that’s been portrayed about women!

So if you don’t mind three aged men with high libido and low underwear blatantly hitting on a girl who is oblivious to good touch bad touch (Lagta hain madam ne Satyamev Jayate nahi dekha!), then The Shaukeens might work for you.
Watch it only if you are a die-hard Akshay Kumar fan.