One reason the most famous show ‘about nothing’ was a nine-season success is that we cared about the characters: we liked some, we disliked some. Additionally, Seinfeld was funny and smart—qualities sadly missing in Entourage, a big-screen show about nothing. While the world Entourage depicts (Hollywood) is vapid, excesscrazed and silly, the movie is, too. Maybe director Doug Ellin meant to link those two, but there is a much more basic failure here. The characters are not well-defined, so we don’t care about them. (They need to stand alone, beyond their TV show.) The supposedly close relationship among them is not developed here, so we don’t feel like they’re a family. All we see them doing is riding around in convertibles, looking for women. And when attempts are made to show they have substance—because one is about to be a dad, another has found a woman he wants more from than a hook-up, a third aspires to acting excellence—those attempts fall way short. These guys feel like frat boys, only they whine a lot more. One bright spot is Jeremy Piven as the frenetic agent trying to hold a big movie deal together. While a caricature like the others, he has some personality. Even Billy Bob Thornton as the Texas money man behind the movie deal and a dozen big-name cameos can’t pull this movie out of the reject pile.
Should You See It? A resounding, don’t bother. —D.W.
Viewed at Wehrenberg Ronnie’s 20 Cine
