Directed by Doug Ellin, starring Adrian Grenier, and a host of B-Listers.
Simon Morris reviews the movie spin-off of the TV series Entourage, which explains how films like Entourage get made.
The TV series Entourage was about under-employed film stars, and the people dependant on them. All stars have entourages apparently – ranging from drivers and agents to menial dogs-bodies and gofers. The idea for the series came from someone who should know. Actor Mark Wahlberg was both the producer and the role model for lead character Vince. The show ran for about seven years.
Now, four years later, they’ve made a movie about what’s happened to Vince, E, Turtle, Drama and Ari. If you liked the original series, you might like this. It depends on whether you’re as fascinated by celebrities as you keep being told you are.
If this were a real-life portrait of how terrible films get made – like Robert Altman’s The Player, or even old classics like Singin’ In The Rain or Sunset Boulevard – this would be a darker, and possibly better film.
But it’s not. It’s about fun in Tinseltown, where the least talented people can party pretty much all the time. The obvious comparison is with New Zealand series Auckland Daze, but without the charm, the brains and the jokes.
Entourage is like an interminable home-movie of Hollywood playing itself, a gigantic selfie of the most self-absorbed industry on earth. They toil not, neither do they spin. They certainly don’t make movies any more, apart from complete rubbish like Entourage.
