Film Review: Entourage

Entourage. Rated MA15+ (strong sex scenes and coarse language). 104 minutes. Written and directed by Doug Ellin.

Verdict: The politically incorrect Entourage boys are back in town.

Loosely based on the life and times of Mark Wahlberg on his journey to movie stardom, Entourage (2004–2011) was a hit television series, created and written by Ellin, and produced for HBO by Wahlberg and Stephen Levinson.
 
The series focussed on the escapades of movie star Vincent Chase (Adrian Grenier), his manager Eric (Kevin Connolly), his half-brother and wannabe actor, Johnny (Kevin Dillon), his loyal friend Turtle (Jerry Ferrara) and his indefatigable agent, Ari (Jeremy Piven).

The series was helped enormously by the presence of Wahlberg (and a vertiable catalogue of Hollywood stars making cameo appearances), and a good deal of its effectiveness was due to the fact that we never knew if the often outrageous storylines were based on actual events in Wahlberg’s life.

For the big screen version, Ellin has steadfastly refused to depart from his hugely successful formula, and he and his original cast members run with it at a hundred miles an hour. Vincent’s next project, a film called Hyde he is directing and starring in, has already cost Ari’s investor Larsen (Billy Bob Thornton) millions of dollars. But when Vincent tells him that he needs more money to finish it, Ari learns that the extra funds will only be forthcoming if Larsen’s troubled, spoilt son Travis (Haley Joel Osment) is allowed to personally oversee the film’s completion.

What worked for the series transfers onto the big screen in all its tasteless and politically incorrect glory. Of the cast who are mostly going through their overly familiar paces, Piven is the stand-out as the stressed-out Ari. The scene where he loses his temper during a relationship counselling session and furiously punches a framed picture of a kitten is both as wrong and as hilarious as it gets.

This review was commissioned by the West Australian Newspaper Group.