Some movies make you sick to your stomach. This movie is one of them. Entourage is the cinematic equivalent of the frat guy from college who can’t wait to tell you in graphic detail about how he banged some chick last night and asks if you want to smell his fingers.

The film is a continuation of the HBO show of the same name, where we follow the up-and-coming Hollywood actor Vincent Chase and his titular group of friends who join him on the journey. Chase follows his acting career with a directorial debut in a gritty dubstep reboot of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde that faces multiple production problems. Unfortunately, the fake dubstep movie we see glimpses of is way better than the actual one that audiences are expected to spend $12 on this weekend.

Entourage runs at an eternal 105 minutes despite having barely enough story to fill a 2 ½-minute trailer. The pacing is so sloppy that it makes Adam Sandler’s recent output feel like the work of an auteur. The filmmakers care so little about the story that the only resemblances to one happen within the first 15 minutes and the last 10. Sequences that could have wrapped up in five minutes are padded out for an eternity as presumably blackmailed celebrities make endless extended cameos. Attempts at cinematic shots such as characters walking across the screen go on for such exceedingly awkward lengths of time that it’s almost like they forgot to edit it. Hangout movies let audiences spend time with characters they want to understand more, which is why it’s OK when the plot takes a backseat. The problem is that this movie wants us to spend the entire time hanging out with unbearable people.

And then there’s the misogyny. The female characters solely exist to be hit on or have sex with the male characters. You’ll know this because 90% of the dialogue in this movie consists of the entourage talking about how they want to or have already had sex with women who show up throughout. While Martin Scorsese’s psychotically cathartic The Wolf Of Wall Street had sexist stockbrokers as the subjects, we were never asked to like them. Entourage idolizes and celebrates rich misogynistic men. This movie loves its main characters and assumes we do too. Most of the humor in the script comes from such “jokes” as “Fun is forgetting a girl’s name when you’re fucking her” or “Can you fuck my daughter’s friends so I don’t have to?” It doesn’t help that Entourage finds casual homophobia to be a laugh riot too. While supporting characters occasionally acknowledge that our heroes are kind of jerks, none of it seems meant to matter.

There are elements of the movie that could have made for effective Hollywood satire. In fact, a movie about the disastrous making of a big-budget dubstep reboot of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde makes for an interesting concept. The problem was that the filmmakers forgot to make a movie or care about their own plot. The main conflict is solved in the first 40 minutes and then subplots appear once in a while to magically resolve themselves three minutes later. Entourage doesn’t have a script, it has a half-assed brainstorming session turned into dialogue. When characters assure each other “It’s all good,” you’ll have no problem believing that nothing is going on.

At the end of the movie, I overheard multiple conversations at the exit consisting of, “It was basically an extended episode.” And as somebody not extensively familiar with the show, it sure felt like it. The other reaction from the movie happened right during the credits as an audience member flipped off the projector to create a giant middle finger silhouette, and that just about summed up the torturously miserable experience of this movie.

Entourage
2015
dir. Doug Ellin
105 min