ENTOURAGE, THE MOVIE
HBO series hits big screen
If the class- war crime that was the second Sex and the City movie wasn’t enough to convince HBO to stop milking big- screen dollars from its premium cable sitcoms, it’s probably safe to say nothing will.
That feature- length luxurylifestyle infomercial at least had the aura of being a disappointing departure, flattening the clever dynamic of mid- 2000s modern womanhood under a designer heel.
Entourage, for what it’s worth, is not stooping below its pedigree. A toothless Hollywood satire, it’s always just been about a jumpedup gaggle of bros thoroughly in awe of their awesomeness dealing with problems most of its audience would set their one- bedroom condos on fire to have.
Its apparent saving grace is that it’s really about male friendship and how it perseveres no matter how many supermodels your most handsome bud has to date.
It evidently speaks to anyone who ever unironically used the phrase “bros before hoes,” mostly because their conversations are also generally stilted, troglodytic and not as funny as the people involved in them seem to think.
The movie picks up roughly where the TV show left off, with a few signs of noticeable aging. Foulmouthed super agent Ari Gold ( Jeremy Piven) is almost relaxing in luxury while supposed A- lister Vince ( Adrian Grenier) gets over one of Hollywood’s shortest- ever marriages with a yacht party.
What amounts to the story of the film is helpfully laid out by a Piers Morgan exposé that also doubles as a reintroduction to everyone: Vince’s directorial debut, a modern- day update of the Jekyll and Hyde story with himself as a CGI- powered DJ, is running over budget, threatening to derail not only his career but Ari’s new role as the studio head that green- lit it. And the problem might just be that Vince has surrounded himself with hangers- on who have no inkling of quality.
Don’t feel too worried about the crew, though: Entourage would never challenge the chummy shoulder- punching of its main foursome.
Instead of stirring up anything between them, they each get a dragging subplot of their own.
The delusional sensitivity of Eric ( Kevin Connolly) is challenged as he plows his way through a bevy of women, even though his ex, Sloane ( Emmanuel Chriqui) is pregnant with their child.
Newly slim and rich Turtle ( Jerry Ferrara) spends his days trying to woo MMA fighter Ronda Rousey, playing herself with a plodding smirkiness that at least fits her castmates.
Vince’s older brother Johnny Drama ( Kevin Dillon), meanwhile, worries about his impending star turn in Vince’s movie while dirty Skyping with a married journalist.
Actual tension is farmed out to interloper Travis ( Haley Joel Osment), the son of the Texas financier who is bankrolling Vince’s vision ( not that, really, we get much insight into what that vision is).
Worried about the cost overruns, he shows up and locks Vince out of the editing bay, shoving a list of demands about cuts in his face, starting with Johnny’s part and maybe even including Vince himself.
This turns out to be because Vince had sex with a supermodel Travis was interested in — because women, inveterately referred to in rude terms throughout, are the only reason any man does anything in this world’s ethos.
Travis might be a more convincing bad guy if he weren’t entirely indistinguishable from the entourage’s lunks, save for a yokel accent and couple percentages more body fat.
Most of dealing with Travis is left to Ari, and Piven’s manically exhausted performance sums up the problems of stretching a diverting half- hour to a torpid 104 minutes.
His angry agent isn’t quite the dynamo he’s sometimes remembered as — and his limits are thoroughly tested as Entourage drags out his pseudo- homophobic and flappingly furious tics.
He’s lively, but even he can only be interesting in contained bursts — and no amount of pans across bikini- clad women can change that.
The weird, retrograde chemistry might still work for fans, although you’d think even they would like a little more drama with their Drama for the longer commitment.
Or maybe not: The overarching mood is self- congratulation, which no doubt helps the sugary medicine of lifestyle fantasy go down.