Entourage reviews: What are the critics saying?

Entourage: The Movie sounds like something that could only happen in Entourage: The TV Show. Four childhood friends from Queens, N.Y., live a dream life after the Handsome One becomes a movie star and the whole crew has to learn how to navigate the twists and turns of stardom, with all its privileges and temptations. For eight seasons on HBO, it was the ultimate vicarious fantasy for young men who wanted to be Leo DiCaprio for a day.

In the new film directed by Doug Ellin, Vincent Chase (Adrian Grenier) is still having sex with models and actresses, but everyone’s moved up in the world. Ari Gold (Jeremy Piven), Vince’s pit-bull former agent, is now running a studio, and his first $100 million budgeted picture is a risky take on Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde—directed by Vince—and financed by an eccentric Texas oil man (Billy Bob Thornton). Eric (Kevin Connolly) is going to be a dad, Turtle (Jerry Ferrara) shed some weight and is a booze magnate, and Drama (Kevin Dillon) is still the butt of the jokes. Okay, so Drama hasn’t exactly graduated to the next level. But that’s fine; in fact, it’s preferred. Growth or maturation isn’t exactly what fans are expecting. As EW’s Chris Nashawaty wrote in his B-grade review, “It turns out … all we needed was some time to miss [Entourage].”

For the rest of Nashawaty’s review and a sampling of opinions from other critics around the country, click below.

Chris Nashawaty (Entertainment Weekly)

“The film’s twitchy ADHD pacing hardly matters since we’re in such good company. What plot there is hinges on the guys having to beg a Texas yokel financier (Billy Bob Thornton) for more money on Vince’s film, although the message can pretty much be boiled down to this: Entourage, the show and the movie, is about five insanely lucky knuckleheads who have each other’s backs in a town that’s more likely to stab you there.”

A.O. Scott (New York Times) ▼

“By the time it reached the end of its HBO run in 2011, Entourage had grown staler than last night’s Axe body spray. The passing of a few more years has not improved the aroma. Watching the movie is like finding an ancient issue of a second-tier lad mag — not even Maxim, but Loaded or Nuts — in a friend’s guest bathroom. You wonder how it got there. You wonder how you got there.”

Richard Roeper (Chicago Sun-Times)

“Four years later, here comes Entourage the movie, and it’s like catching up with an old friend and remembering why you don’t hang out with him anymore: He’s stuck in a rut and he has nothing new to say.”

Stephen Whitty (Newark Star-Ledger)

“Despite the extra cameos and extra time, it just feels like A Very Special Episode of the old TV show—with familiar faces, familiar jokes, male-pattern bonding and Ari running through it all, cursing frantically, dealing furiously. ‘I’m handling it’ he yells to one person after another. But he can’t quite handle this.”

Andrew Barker (Variety)

“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. In the film, the only real threat to this world of easy opulence, flashy cars, award shows, top-shelf booze and boobs is the flyover-country interloper, whose rubbish tastes and rustic ways the power brokers sneer at, while always aware that they’re totally dependent on his money in the end. Perhaps there’s a smarter-than-expected subtext here.”

Peter Keough (Boston Globe) ▼

“Doug Ellin’s movie adaptation of his HBO series about a movie star and his wolf pack of homies (inspired by producer Mark Wahlberg’s Hollywood salad days), has all the class of Grown Ups 2. It resurrects a macho churlishness and puerile wish fulfillment that is less charming now than it was back when the show went off the air in 2011. At a time when such documentaries as The Hunting Ground expose the toll these attitudes take, such humor seems, at best, dated.”

Mark Olsen (Los Angeles Times)

“The film’s biggest stumbling block is its self-satisfied, dismissive attitude toward anyone outside its main circle, in particular women, who are depicted almost exclusively as nags, scolds, schemers or ornamentation. … The only female character to break free is athlete Ronda Rousey, as herself, with a playful screen presence. She and Turtle repeatedly mix signals as to whether they are interested in each other personally or professionally, and their scenes have a freshness not found elsewhere.”

Ann Hornaday (Washington Post) ▼

“A one-man personification of the fear that Hollywood runs on, Ari is a moderately compelling antihero, far more interesting than Vince and the callow fellows he hangs with. And, as he did in the show, Ari single-handedly saves the movie version of Entourage from Medellin-scale disaster.”

Mick LaSalle (San Francisco Chronicle)

“Grenier is like an abstraction of a movie star, an uninteresting guy who just happens to look a certain way, which makes it hard to believe that he could direct a great film. But certain things must be accepted for the movie’s wheels to go around. The people around him are a lot more amusing, particularly Piven, as a barracuda with a conscience. As Vince’s half brother, Kevin Dillon seems crude and far-fetched, though I suspect Entourage aficionados might like him best, the way Sex and the City fans tended to favor Samantha.”

Sheri Linden (Hollywood Reporter)

“Like Curb Your Enthusiasm before it, Entourage proved that stars are game when it comes to playing asshole versions of themselves. But only a few of the movie’s cameos — those of Liam Neeson, producer Mark Wahlberg and an especially sharp Armie Hammer — have the kind of bite that gave early seasons of the show its delirious brashness.”

Andrew O’Hehir (Salon)

“Viewed strictly in terms of conception and execution (i.e., what is this trying to accomplish, and how well does it do so?) Ellin’s new Entourage film is highly effective. I’d still probably rather see these characters dumped into the middle of the Ukrainian conflict, or eaten by Godzilla. But that’s old-fashioned morality talking, and anyway I have a hunch that Turtle and Vinnie’s hapless brother Johnny Drama would survive almost anything.”

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Overall Metacritic rating (1-100): 38

Rotten Tomatoes: 31 percent

Rated: R

Length: 105 minutes

Starring Jeremy Piven, Adrian Grenier, Kevin Connolly, Jerry Ferrara

Directed by Doug Ellin

Distributor: Warner Bros.