Entourage : Movie Review


Entourage (2015) - Movie PosterAcclaimed Emmy-winning series "Entourage" ran for eight seasons (2004-2011) on HBO, an observant, cameo-filled, cuttingly humorous insider's look at the Hollywood milieu revolving around rising movie star Vincent Chase (Adrian Grenier) and his close friends and business team. The show, loosely based on executive producer Mark Wahlberg's real-life experiences as an up-and-coming, in-demand celebrity, was certainly not perfect, its biggest stretch in plausibility coming from its inability to ever actually establish that Vince was a good actor. In fairness, the series did not deny this fact; even acid-tongued agent Ari Gold (Jeremy Piven) said he got by solely on his looks and charisma. The problem is that, while one doesn't have to be a great actor to become popular, he or she does need to at least possess talent in order to have career longevity, and the show never really proved this. With that said, it was a fast, smart, endlessly watchable satire, buoyed by its authentic Los Angeles locale and a terrific ensemble.

Four years after the gang flew into the sunset headed for Vince's impulsive Paris wedding, "Entourage" has made the journey to the big screen in true "Sex and the City" style. Unfortunately, as is so often the case with TV-to-movie extensions, the same magic has not been successfully translated. Written and directed by show creator Doug Ellin (1998's "Kissing a Fool"), the film plays like a vapid spoof of its old self, at once ceaselessly middling, painfully contrived, and so over-the-top that it feels less like a fleet-footed exposé of Hollywood culture and more like a lame extended episode of "The Twilight Zone." Lazily relying on the good will of undiscriminating fans who will be happy regardless just by seeing the cast back together again, Ellin ups the misogyny to new levels while running in place with a collection of throwaway subplots that bypass all possible complexity for creative and dramatic dead-ends.

See Dustin Putman, TheFilmFile.com. for full review

Author : Dustin Putman, TheFilmFile.com.