It was a show about a movie star living large in LA with his three best mates from New York, and now there’s a movie about literally the same thing.

As male answer to Sex and the City, the show never shied away from displaying the gratuitous excess of money and sex in Hollywood. Entourage paints a man-child’s dream of ‘making it’ in LA where it’s all fun, games, premieres and paparazzi.

The four most unlikeable characters on TV continue to be loved; the show got seven seasons and now we have the inevitable film. As someone in the movie industry I can’t even fathom how characters like ‘E’ ever get any work done (he’s a producer and a manager? HOW?) Additionally, how can the sexy leading man, Vinnie Chase (Adrian Grenier), be the most uncharismatic and boring of the quartet?

Take a breath, Sam – it’s only a film…

Okay, here we go:

The show was loosely based off Mark Wahlberg’s rise to fame, and now, many years later the story marches to the beat of its own drum. Vinnie Chase is recently divorced and the ‘it’ guy in Hollywood. When offered his next film role Vinnie adamantly claims he wants to direct his next project. It’s a bold move… How will this pan out?

Well suddenly there’s a fade with a title ‘8 Months Later’ and instead of a movie about the trials and tribulations of directing a movie the plot centres on impressing a self-entitled brat Travis McCredle (Hayley Joel Osment). As the Executive Producer, Travis is the linchpin that holds Vinnie’s film financially stable as he begs for more cash to complete the project.

First bit of confusion comes in a story rife with unnecessary celebrity cameos, I get the idea to construct a ‘the real world’ but then why is Billy Bob Thornton playing a fictional character as McCredle’s dad? You can’t have it both ways! Then there’s a redundant narrative for each character, most of which are pointless to the range of stupid.

The movie is saved, as long-time fans will expect, by Jeremy Piven’s Ari Gold – the scene-stealing Studio Executive who is the funniest, the best actor and the best character. Gold made watching this cinematic trainwreck a bit more enjoyable.

I really wanted to like this movie. The show had its moments and overall was a nice ‘escapism’ kind of series, where you could watch a motley crew get up to shenanigans at an A-list level. That was a cool idea 10 years ago, but by now is tired. I don’t know why the movie was made in the first place but the purist fans may hold resolute on its quality.

By far the worst thing about Entourage is that the script feels like it was written as they filmed it. There are setups for plot points that don’t pay off, other narratives tied up so conveniently that it just feels lazy, and there are awkward, shoehorned nods to the original show that make the whole film a shabby attempt at being meta on itself rather than crafting a great finale for a much-loved series that was worthy of one.