On the 11th September 2011 we said goodbye to Vincent Chase and his entourage after eight seasons and just shy of 100 episodes of LA-loving, movie star-living, hedonistic shenanigans. But as in Hollywood, nothing is really dead until you see the body... and even then there’s still hope. And by "hope" I mean a big screen reincarnation. ‘Entourage’ has done a ‘Sex and the City’ and produced a life after death movie, almost four years after the series ended. So does that mean that like ‘Sex and the City’ the movie sucks? Full disclosure: I only ever watched the first season of ‘Entourage’ 11 short years ago, but if the movie is any good it should stand on its own merit.
Picking up where the series left off, Vincent Chase (Adrian Grenier) is now married... sort of. While technically he’s on his honeymoon in Ibiza, yet his wife has left him after only nine days - a short marriage that is only rivaled by Britney Spears’ two day nuptials back in ’04. With a renewed lease on life, Vincent decides he wants to go in a different direction with his career and after a quick phone call to a recently unretired and newly appointed studio head Ari Gold (Jeremy Piven), Vin is about to make his directorial debut. Fast forward eight months and the movie is over budget, unfinished and no one has seen it. Ari is sent to Texas to deal with his eccentric, hick co-financiers, and things go from bad to worse when the film is held hostage over creative differences that jeopardise the entire project and everyone’s careers. Meanwhile, the rest of the crew are dealing with their own problems with women, children and Drama’s never-ending quest for fame, respect and recognition.
'ENTOURAGE' TRAILER 3
Packed to the brim with celebrity cameos that surprisingly don’t feel forced or gratuitous, the entourage has well and truly returned and are back to their old tricks. But while the film is funny it’s not exactly “laugh out loud” funny, still an enjoyable romp nonetheless between Ari’s yelling and anger issues, E’s unrelenting honesty, Turtles’s charm and Drama’s drama. With the series’ creator Doug Ellin at the helm, this transition couldn’t have been is better hands with the love of the characters and the loyalty to the show’s fans evident throughout. Once again, Vincent is the sun everyone else revolves around without actually having to do anything other than just stand there while Ari and the boys steal the show. Some might be bothered by this - that the main character isn’t in fact the main character - but hey, it worked for the show, so why not the movie too?
Enjoyable whilst nicely and almost effortlessly filling in the gaps non-series watchers need filling, fans will love ‘Entourage: The Movie’, while newcomers will think it’s pretty cool too. And just like the eight whole seasons of the show, everyone will walk out asking, “Is that what it’s like in real life?”