Sean

Matt and I took in a screening of Entourage on Monday. Full disclosure: I’ve never watched the show, not even once. So I went in basically cold, knowing just the basic premise. Fortunately, the writers had anticipated people like me (or possibly the premise was also the entire plot for the eight seasons the show ran). Either way, the movie jumped right into things and didn’t leave me behind.

it seems very fun to be a celebrity, and possibly even more fun to be in a celebrity’s inner circle. The four guys are inseparable and each of them gets about equal screen time as far as I can figure it. Vince, the actual star, certainly doesn’t get more screen time than his bros, both semi-biological and adopted, which is surprising in a way since the plot revolves around a movie that Vince is both starring in and directing. But it makes sense after I realized that the whole point of the movie, and presumably the show, is the relationship between these guys. That they are on this ride together even though only one is driving the car (which is a poor metaphor because apparently Turtle started out as Vince’s driver and seems to still fill that role despite also being a tequila baron).

By the looks of things, the boys had a fun time making this movie. It may just have been a good excuse to drive expensive cars and rent expensive houses and party with naked women on expensive boats, but isn’t that what being a celebrity is all about? Fortunately, their fun is infectious and I enjoyed tagging along. Entourage is a very entertaining movie and is the next best thing to having a famous friend. It gets a rating of eight extremely brief celebrity cameos out of ten.

Matt

This being his introduction to the glamorous world of Entourage, I was looking forward to hearing Sean’s take on the movie. It mostly hit the ground running but worked in a Piers Morgan segment early on that cleverly brought new recruits up to speed while dropping in-jokes for the fans.

This may not have been my initiation but I can hardly call myself a fan. I only binge-watched until the end of the third season. Lucky for me, not much seems to have changed in the last five seasons except that Ari is now somehow the head of a major studio and Turtle has lost a lot of weight.

How you feel about Entourage the movie probably depends on how you feel about Entourage the series. Watching the film at the screening last night was a lot like watching three back-to-back episodes of the show with a roomful of fans and Sean. They didn’t even skip the theme song. I will say that I laughed more consistently last night than I did watching the first three seasons of the show and that I can’t imagine a fan being disappointed. They’ll definitely get their money’s worth with a couple dozen or more celebrity cameos, even if only about half of them are used as effectively as they could be.

Mostly though, i couldn’t have said it any better than Sean. It’s the bond between these four guys and the agent that bet everything on them that makes this franchise work. It ties together all the otherwise seemingly random gags, cameos, and subplots into a coherent story and a very enjoyable movie.