I wasn’t there from the start, to be honest I hadn’t even heard of Entourage until midway through its third season when I caught an episode after a night out with a friend. Immediately I was hooked, going out the next day to buy the first two seasons on DVD (understand kids, there was a time before HBO Go) You see I’ve always loved movies but even more I’ve always loved movies about the movie business even if tinsel town was only the backdrop, think L.A. Confidential, come to think of it that may be why ‘Confidential’ is in my top 3 films of all time. Add to that the fact that I’ve been blessed to have the same group of close friends for most of my life and you can see why Entourage had all the ingredients for what would become my favorite show. We didn’t have the money or the fame but that was me and my friends…ok, so that wasn’t me and my friends at all, more like a bizarro ‘What If?’ world that seemed all kinds of awesome. Long story short I could identify with enjoying the best times of your life with real friends that are more like family. I get why a lot of people dropped off and eventually found their antics tiresome but I never saw them as a group of douchebags (not my words, that was the generally accepted term by season 6) because honestly, they weren’t. They were just a group of guys that watched out for each other and happened to have a life that most of us can only dream of having. That being said the infamous Sasha Grey/Vince is a cokehead addled season 7 did almost lose me, then comes season 8 just in time to (mostly) redeem the show and bow out gracefully with everything pretty neatly wrapped up. There had always been talk of a movie, most popular shows court that idea, but after a year or two it seemed like it wouldn’t happen. I should’ve known, like most of the show’s storylines the movie defied odds to pull together and bing bang boom, it’s 2015 and we can sit down to an Entourage movie.
It was four years for us, but for the boys it was barely a week. We pick up pretty much right where we left off. Ari is now the head of a major studio, Vince is at the top of his game and looking to break new ground as a director, E and Sloan are still will they/won’t they but are having a baby together, Turtle finally made it on his own and is a multi-million dollar business man (for those of you that forgot this was mostly thanks to Vince not selling off the stock Turtle sold him in Avion, his Tequila company) and Drama…well, he’s still Drama. Our plot picks up when Ari decides to cast Vince in his first major picture as studio head, Vince accepts with a caveat…he wants to direct. Casting Vince isn’t a big deal but letting his friend, a first-time director with no experience, puts Ari in a tough spot with his financier Larson McCredle (Billy Bob Thornton), especially when Vince goes over budget. After Ari goes to ask for more money McCredle agrees as long as his son Travis (played wonderfully by Haley Joel Osment) can go and watch over the progress. Travis has more in mind then watching over the pros work and almost immediately starts injecting himself in the process and putting the entire project in jeopardy. Plot, plot, plot, that’s not what Entourage is about, we want to see a bunch of guys having a blast and doing things we only wish we could do. So does it deliver?
Short answer, yes and no. Yeah yeah, not really taking a hard stance am I? Here’s the deal, on the surface the flick has everything you’d want out of an Entourage movie, right from the opening scene that takes place on a boat in the middle of the water just off the coast of Ibiza. Still, it just seemed like something was missing and as much of a cop out as it may be I can’t put my finger on it exactly. Mostly, as odd as this is, everything seems toned down. Granted HBO is known for letting go of the reigns when it comes to not just creativity but, for lack of a better term, modesty, but still you’d expect the movie version of a TV show to be bigger, your weekly serial jacked up to 11 and on steroids. That’s not really what we get, it’s more like they took a season story arc and condensed it into a 90 minute movie. The problem with this is you lose the fleshing out that a full season of TV gives you. Yes, I know what everyone will say to that, “How much can you flesh out such shallow characters?”…I guess that’s why I can’t really put a finger on what’s missing. They are shallow characters, mind you that’s not always a bad thing, the lack of complexity always worked for Entourage, but when you sit down for the movie you only get a small piece of whatever it was that drew you to the show in the first place. Take Ari for instance, the runaway favorite character for most people. We see power-suit Ari but it’s not in all his glory, he’s just as offensive and combustible as always but there’s simply not enough of it and what there was seems almost neutered. The unbreakable loyalty between the guys? It’s there, but other than a plot point of Vince standing up for his brother and his role in the movie within a movie we don’t get much else. Though I will give points for the 5 minutes surrounding the birth of E and Sloan’s child, the family feel is in full effect when the crew gathers in the hospital lobby. The celebrity cameos, a staple of the show, seem to be the only place that they really wanted to capture the spirit of the show. Unfortunately the plan backfired, the flick is so full of cameo’s that I almost want to blame that for taking focus away from the boys. They literally bring back almost every major celebrity cameo and add a handful more to include those who became famous after the show (thankfully they spared us any Kardashians or Hiltons). Turtle’s entire story line surrounds him trying to get a date with Rhonda Rousey which doesn’t result in many good laughs or even a concise conclusion. 
I don’t mean to tear the movie up completely, but I think fans of the series will side with me in thinking that somethings missing. This isn’t to say the movie doesn’t have its redeeming qualities, everything else aside it’s still a fun movie that provides quite a few good laughs. At the end of the day I’d rather have this than nothing, but I think it makes a good case for bringing a series back to viewers as a series again and not just a movie. Whenever a popular series ends there’s eventually a call for a movie adaptation, why not just bring it back for an encore season? Obviously if you were never a fan of the show the movie isn’t going to convert you and if you were a fan of the show you most likely are going to be at least a bit let down, but like I said…it’s better than nothing.
3 out of 5 Guttenbergs
