Movieo
Poster for Entertainment

Entertainment

2015 · 1h 53m · R Comedy, Drama
Directed by Rick Alverson

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Overview

Set in the Mojave Desert, the film follows a broken-down comedian playing clubs across the Southwest, working his way to Los Angeles to meet his estranged daughter.

Director and cast

Critics on Rotten Tomatoes

Top critics, in their words

All reviews
81%
Tomatometer
Fresh

There's a chic emptiness to "Entertainment," undoubtedly, and anti-comedy constructs that may rub the wrong way, but there's also a spiky intelligence at work too, one that engages through the artifice of disengagement and the illusion of "performance."

Robert Abele, Los Angeles Times
Fresh

It is not fun, but its confrontational style yields dividends.

Tom Keogh, Seattle Times
Fresh

A daring and mainly successful black comedy about a dour and depressive comedian on a dead-end tour of California.

J. R. Jones, Chicago Reader
Rotten

The Comedian is an ugly man with an ugly soul, and an ugly sense of comedy that at one point literally includes making fart noises for 90 full seconds as he pretends to gun down his silent audience with a soccer trophy.

Tasha Robinson, RogerEbert.com
Fresh

Like Hamburger's meta-hacky comedy routine, the film confronts and challenges in order to produce something increasingly rare in American cinema: an active, engaged experience.

John Semley, Globe and Mail

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