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The ‘Entourage’ movie is for the bros (and no one else) – Metro US

The ‘Entourage’ movie is for the bros (and no one else)

Entourage
Warner Bros. Pictures

‘Entourage’
Director:
Doug Ellin
Stars: Kevin Connolly, Adrian Grenier
Rating: R
1 Globe (out of 5)

The bros of “Entourage” still call each other “bro” with all sincerity. That’s all you need to know about the “Entourage” movie, which isn’t so much a movie as a state of mind — an infantilic, horndog plane of pure, unchecked douchery, beamed from the evil side of producer Mark Wahlberg you keep wanting to forget exists. It’s the dude’s flip side to another HBO lifestyle fantasy, “Sex and the City,” where the lusted-for designer shoes are fake boobs and the apparently inevitable film spinoff is, thankfully, almost an hour shorter. It’s just not short enough.

It is, however, arguably even better than “SATC” as wealth porn. Things kick off on a yacht in Ibiza, because of course they do, where vapid unlikely movie star Vincent Chase — played by Adrian Grenier, who’s so not a real movie star he’s second-billed in his own movie — has just ended a marriage after nine days. He and his bride had nothing to talk about. No wonder. The boys — played by faux-nice guy Kevin Connolly, eternally forgettable Jerry Ferrara and instantly unpleasant almost-50-year-old living Tex Avery cartoon Kevin Dillon — can shoot the breeze together, but only talk to and about women in terms of how much they deserve banging. Sometimes the women are playing themselves, in the case of Emily Ratajkowski, who proves supportive to the sometimes vaguely brooding self-described “artist” Vincent, which is to say she sleeps with him behind Armie Hammer’s back.

The plot: Vincent has directed an expensive blockbuster that reimagines “Jekyll and Hyde” in the DJ world and looks like it was made in 1998. The project is put into jeopardy when the money men — specifically the son (Haley Joel Osment, game) of one Texas money man (Billy Bob Thornton, disinterested) — tries to sabotage it with “notes.” It’s no spoiler to say order is restored, i.e., that rich, handsome people rule and pudgy Oscar nominees who had more than a blink-and-miss cameo in Spielberg’s “A.I.” drool. Jeremy Piven returns as explosive agent Ari Gold, who starts off retired then is suddenly running a studio. He loses his stuff a lot, but this profane Tasmanian Devil shtick was bested for all eternity by Peter Capaldi on “The Thick of It” and in “In the Loop.” He so owns this game that when Piven does it he seems like a high schooler doing a weak imitation David Mamet.

We could go on: about how “Entourage” exists in an alternate universe where Piers Morgan is still relevant; about how it actually seems to think Vincent has real talent beyond his aging rent-a-hunk looks; about how the plethora of cameos tend to be not only unfunny but depressingly sour. (That said, the film’s top five walk-ons, ending with the best: Warren Buffett, Judy Greer, Saul Rubinek, an earnestly deployed song by The National and Martin Landau). But who are we kidding? This is a niche film for a niche audience — a celebration of a certain belief system for a certain type of male that seems to be going out of favor, at least in pop culture, if not in actual life. Everyone deserves a movie, even bros, and when it comes to the type of old school-style young male who feels threatened by women who are funny and gays getting married, this is the movie for them.

Follow Matt Prigge on Twitter @mattprigge