Not quite the Gold standard
HBO TV series reunion a mostly tolerable attempt
There’s no successful formula for the extraction of a stand-alone movie from the mines of a recently departed TV series. If there were, that second “Sex and the City” film and last year’s Kickstarter-funded “Veronica Mars” wouldn’t have turned out galling and forgettable, respectively.
How’s “Entourage”? More like the latter. It’s in the realm of “eh.” Devoted fans of the HBO series (2004-2011) will find it passably engaging, and newcomers will likely stare at the inside-Hollywood tropes and panic attacks the way Nipper the RCA dog stared at the Victrola.
Writer-director Doug Ellin picks up where he left off Season 8, with Jeremy Piven’s superagent Ari Gold off to Italy to work on anger-management issues. Movie star Vince Chase (Adrian Grenier) and his crew from Queens, none of whom seems quite full enough to star in an actual motion picture, are ready to par-tay and eager for more of what Hollywood success, eternal
MPAA rating: adolescent male division, has in store.
“Entourage” brings Vince into the auteurist big leagues. Ari, whose retirement lasts a good 10 seconds, is elevated to studio head and wants Vince to star in a contemporary remake of “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.” Vince agrees, upon the condition that he directs himself. The money’s coming from a Texas billionaire (Billy Bob Thornton), whose son (Haley Joel Osment) takes an interest in the project.
For an hour or so we’re kept in suspense, waiting for Ari to quit the reformed act and explode with the malignant, hostile energy that made Piven’s portrayal famous in the first place and basically made the series. And to the degree the film works, which is a little, he makes that too. Audiences always root for the meanest, funniest, rudest SOB in the room, and Piven needn’t do much of anything to dominate his “Entourage” scenes beyond a raised voice and a fidgety downward glance into his character’s merrily corrupt soul.
Ellin squanders the narrative possibilities though. We don’t actually see Vince making “Hyde”; all we get is a “six months later” title card and, eventually, the answer to the question of whether Vince pulled it off. That’s too bad. The rest of the activity is laid out the way Ellin laid out his TV “Entourage” scripts, setting various “A” and “B” narratives in motion. Eric (Kevin Connolly) is about to become a father, though his relationship with Sloan (Emmanuelle Chriqui, who really does hold the screen) is next door to kaput. Turtle (Jerry Ferrara) wants a date with mixed martial artist Ronda Rousey and must prove himself in the ring to secure it. As the Texas money boys start meddling with Vince’s “Hyde,” Johnny (Kevin Dillon, mugging like mad) may end up as the digital equivalent of the cutting room floor.
Ellin has pushed everything to the middle in terms of tone with “Entourage.” To be sure, it’s no “Medellin,” the “Scarface”-style movie Vince brought to Cannes, disastrously, at the end of Season 4. (Full disclosure: In 2008, “At the Movies” host Richard Roeper and I did a bit on the HBO series where we fake-reviewed “Medellin.”) But I wish the film were wilder, meaner; that way, the sincere bits would carry some surprise. Maybe next film, if there is one.
Phillips is a Tribune Newspapers critic.