"Entourage" reviews: Movie is a trip down the Hollywood walk of game
"Entourage" will flash into theaters Wednesday and passé or not, the posse and its well-worn gimmicks are ever more abundant and indulgent for series creator Doug Ellin's movie adaptation, according to critics.
The four years since HBO's cheeky saga "Entourage" ended in 2011 after eight high-flying seasons has seemingly been compressed into just a few weeks for its big-screen event. Vincent Chase's (Adrian Grenier) marriage in the series finale has dissolved after nine days, and Ari Gold's (Jeremy Piven) European retirement has been called off as he returns to Los Angeles as the head-honcho of a movie studio whose first flick features who else but Chase as the star -- and the director. Other than that, little has changed for the "Entourage" Queens-born entourage, as Johnny Drama (Kevin Dillon), Eric (Kevin Connolly) and Turtle (Jerry Ferrara) continue to grapple with the challenges of by-proxy Tinseltown decadence.
Reviewers seem fairly happy, though underwhelmed, in their reports that everything that could be expected of a typical season of "Entourage" can be found in the movie. It's the same amount of depth (or lack thereof) just with greater breadth to spread over its 1 hour 44 minutes run time -- packing in dozens of snarky star-cameos and a longer paper trail that leads all the way to Texas where Billy Bob Thornton and Haley Joel Osmet play financiers who clash with the central band of bros. The movie opens mid-revelry with the posse aboard a yacht surrounded by hot bodies and wealth, which the reviewers think strikes precisely at the show's intentional and unintentional motifs:
Andrew Barker of Variety says it only makes sense to open in this fashion: "The sequence actually does a pretty good job of proscribing the film's central concerns -- conspicuous consumption, camaraderie verging on co-dependency, low-stakes conflict and a guiding principle of bros before boobs -- so much so that the Piers Morgan-narrated catch-up montage that follows is totally unnecessary."
Similarly, Alonso Duralde of The Wrap says the projection of the small-screen themes to the big-screen ends up a little dull: "'Entourage' comes to celebrate the privileges of being white, male, wealthy and famous, not to bury them. While there's nothing wrong with creating a little vicarious wish fulfillment for people who dream of living La Vida Hollywood, it would have been nice if writer-director (and show creator) Doug Ellin had given the movie as many funny lines as there are opening credits for himself. (I counted four.)"
Like few of the movie reviewers, and its characters, the New York Times' A.O. Scott remarks on the roles of women and how they are treated amid the male-dominated entertainment culture it projects: "It says a lot about 'Entourage' and the world it belongs to that the women who keep their clothes mostly on are named in the main credits at the end of the film, while those who expose themselves are relegated to the 'additional credits' along with the celebrities who play themselves... This is not a movie about women, though. It's about Hollywood, which is to say about the narcissism, neediness and sexual entitlement of men. It sometimes pretends to make fun of those things, but let's not kid ourselves. You could accuse it of glamorizing the shallow hedonism it depicts, but that charge would only stick if the movie had any genuine flair, romance or imagination."
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