Entourage Review

If the goal of the Entourage movie was to be completely hollow and empty and to lack any meaning at all, then it succeeded at that brilliantly. As of this writing, this movie stands as easily the most empty and pointless film I’ve watched in quite some time, and I’m torn on whether this film or Jupiter Ascending is the worst film I’ve seen this year.

Discussing the plot of this movie almost feels like an insult to the word “plot.” Vince Chase (Adrian Grenier) is tired of living the shallow, meaningless life of a movie star and wants to do something meaningful. So he demands Ari Gould (Jeremy Piven), who used to be his agent and is now a studio head, to allow him to direct the next movie he stars in. Ari agrees, and the film skips over Vince actually making the film to show us he went over budget and needs more money to finish the film. This is made difficult because Vince is sleeping with Emily Ratajkowski (and every other naked hot woman who will let him) which pisses off the financial backer of the film, Travis McCredle (played by Haley Joel Osment). Now poor Ari has to wrangle all of these overbearing personalities in order to make sure the film is finished or he’ll lose his job. As for Vince’s eponymous entourage, they all have mostly pointless, irritating subplots. Erik (Kevin Connolly), his manager, can’t decide if he wants to keep having sex with random hot women or go back to his equally attractive ex-wife (Emmanuelle Chriqui) who is about to give birth to his child. Turtle (Jerry Ferrara), who apparently used to be poor, fat, and pathetic on the show, is now fit, rich, and supposedly charismatic, and he wants to go out with Ronda Rousey. Vince’s half-brother Johnny Drama (Kevin Dillon), who spent the series being the less talented, unattractive brother of Vince (a role he plays in real life since his brother is the highly talented Matt Dillon) is hoping to make it big since he has a small yet pivotal role in Vince’s movie; a role that will likely be cut because the film’s financier thinks he’s terrible.

I feel like I have lost brain cells in devoting that many words to a discussion of this film’s plot. Allow me to sum it up as this: Ari Gould does all the work, and the rest of the cast succeed despite no apparent talent or effort, and are rewarded with money, women, fame, and a continuous life of no problems except the ones they make themselves. Having never watched any of this show’s 8 seasons, I can only judge Entourage by this film, and based on this film I am quite glad I never watched it. These characters are shallow, unlikable, and lack any real problems that could be relatable to anyone in the audience. Beyond the fact that Adrian Grenier is not a particularly good actor, Vince’s character is impossible to like because the film expects us to be invested in how much he wants this movie to work without us ever seeing him work on the film. Turtle has no character beyond being rich and wanting to date Ronda Rousey. Erik might come off the worst because only in the world of Entourage is having to choose between sex with attractive strangers and his equally attractive ex-wife (who only broke up with him because he slept with her mother…charming) a real problem to have. Kevin Dillon probably comes off the best in that being stuck as a nobody in your more successful brother’s shadow is somewhat relatable, but the movie keeps making fun of how ugly and stupid he is and the character has a lot of the most misogynist and awful lines in the film (which is saying something considering how shallow and misogynist the whole film is).

The only good part of this film is Jeremy Piven as Ari Gould, who is not only the best actor in the film by a fairly wide margin, but he is also the only character in the film with real problems who has to put in a lot of work to resolve them. It’s a shame that his only role in his film is to yell at assholes and clean up the mess of the other characters while they get rewarded for spending the entire movie throwing parties, having sex, and pursuing more women to have sex with. At the same time, Haley Joel Osment is stuck in the thankless role of playing the exact same kind of character as the four leads except that he’s the bad guy because he’s pudgy and unattractive. The only reason he’s the villain is because he wants to have sex with a woman who wants to have sex with Vince. Such wonderfully compelling character drama. Despite having such a terrible role “written” for him, he at least acts enough to stand out in this film.

I’m uncertain if this was true for the series or not, but the Entourage movie attempts to make up for its complete lack of plot, characterization, or compelling drama by filling out its running time with cameos, lavish parties, and lots of naked or half-naked gorgeous women. It’s nice to look at for a while, but you get tired of it after about 20 minutes and the film is 100 minutes long with nothing else to keep you engaged. Furthermore, the constant cameos create the problem of the audience being uncertain who is playing a character in the film and who is simply playing themselves. Aside from Jeremy Piven as Ari Gould and Haley Joel Osment as Travis McCredle, no one displays any real range of acting. So it’s often impossible to tell if Vince and his entourage are characters portrayed by actors or just actors getting paid to party.

I’ve already wasted too much of mine and your time talking about this film. HBO has had plenty of excellent television series over the years, and several of them could probably use a film to conclude plot lines and satisfy fans (*cough* Deadwood *cough*). Unfortunately, between this and the Sex and the City movies, HBO appears to only want to make movies out of its most vapid and hollow projects that no one was really demanding a return to. If you’re a fan of the TV show, then you might enjoy this. For everyone else, steer clear of this vapid, pointless party that is calling itself a movie. It’s dull, irritating, and meaningless. The Entourage movie has absolutely no reason to exist.