They're baaaaaack!
Entourage the feature-length film has hit the big screens with enough glitz, glamour and glory to outshine the small screen it once frequented, but that's just coming from a serious fan. Vince (Adrian Grenier), E (Kevin Connolly), Turtle (Jerry Ferrara), Johnny Drama (Kevin Dillon) and Ari Gold (Jeremy Piven) return to once again take over Hollywood, but have they done enough to impress the critics (in real life and on-screen)?
One thing they all agree on, however, is that the film feels like an extended episode.
Let's take a look to find out what real-life critics are saying of these fictional A-listers.
Benjamin Lee of The Guardian notes that while Entourage as a TV series might not have had the best ending, it's difficult to hate the bromance that these men share. "Though the script might seem simplistic, there is a certain skill to making it all seem so smooth," he writes. "Entourage is like an enthusiastic puppy, slightly tipsy on beer, humping on a stripper's leg, but desperate to please nonetheless. It is a film designed to be liked—which makes it hard to hate."
Sheri Linden of The Hollywood Reporter sums up her review with "the bottom line": "Living larger but maintaining the small-screen feel."
She praises director Doug Ellin for delivering on the "tried-and-true friendships that drive the story," but adds, "Given that the series had traded its satiric freshness for sappy wish-fulfillment fantasy by the time it ended, the must-see factor won't be red-hot except among the ultradevoted."
Variety's Andrew Barker notes that the film is inundated with boobs, sex and celebrity cameos, but ultimately it shines a light on how Hollywood power players really live. "Hollywood has always displayed a puppy-dog eagerness to celebrate itself, but that celebration is usually gussied up with odes to the transformative power of movies, or portraits of Tinseltown as the great repository of dreamers and artists," he writes.
"Entourage simply celebrates the awesomeness of the lives/fantasy lives of the very people making the movie, which is kind of refreshing in its honesty."
Josh Lasser of IGN feels that certain plotlines take Entourage back a few steps, but the core of the movie—the friendships—is at its best. "After the movie is done almost apologizing for the way the series ended and getting new folks up to speed with Vince and his friends, Entourage offers up a strong tale and a bunch of laughs," he writes.
"The biggest weaknesses it sports are its need to find places to fit every character and its desire to retread Eric's love life. When it sticks to what it has always been best at, the relationship of these four friends, it is as good as the series ever was."
A.O. Scott of The New York Times didn't find much endearing about the film at all. "[Entourage] is about Hollywood, which is to say about the narcissism, neediness and sexual entitlement of men. It sometimes pretends to make fun of those things, but let's not kid ourselves," Scott writes. "You could accuse it of glamorizing the shallow hedonism it depicts, but that charge would only stick if the movie had any genuine flair, romance or imagination."
Will you see Entourage? Sound off in the comments below!