The Entourage movie opened Wednesday, June 3, to fairly tepid reviews. But unlike most of those, two Jezebel staffers watched the film together one day after work and, to our pleasant surprise, thought it was an interesting, well-shot, even artful summer film.
Julianne: I was dreading this movie. The reviews have not been great, and the overall theme of Entourage seems inherently flawed if only because there are too many “main” characters to become too attached to any of them. The thing about an entourage, in real life, is that most of those people are just hangers-on, too uninteresting to really care about their day-to-day hijinks rolled up into the vague “let’s make a movie!” plot the trailer promised.
But after seeing this: not so. For one, the trailer really doesn’t do it justice: sure, the main plot is about trying to get a movie made and, more so, trying to really thrive in a big city that wants to eat you alive, yet the overarching themes shone through in an unexpected way: the humility of true friendship, the collective benefits of sticking together and never wavering in your loyalty, almost to the point of socialism. Additionally, and I know you have some interesting things to say about this, just the fact of seeing such strong male bonding being carried out completely without self-consciousness, was refreshing.
Erin: I, too, was prepared for this movie to suck. But Entourage reminded me that, in fact, its cultural ubiquity has been taken for granted. As a franchise, it is singular in its depiction of male friendship and brave in its depictions of male bonding, something that has been narrowed by our restrictive views on what men are allowed to care about. The film really took it to the next level, challenging viewers to see men as entities who aren’t blindly pussy-obsessed automatons. Sometimes, they just want to hang out with their bros. And that’s okay.
Entourage has rightfully gotten criticized over a lack of substantive female roles, and it’s true. The first woman we see includes a shot of a breast, and the only “serious” female characters remain fully clothed the whole time. I get that we critique films for not being inclusive enough, but I think that in this case, Entourage is very much not “about” us, you know? It’s about men. Men who hang out together and have a bond that cannot be replicated. It’s not an endorsement of their view of women; it’s just an observation of their real lives.
Julianne: The one thing about the women in this movie, though, is that some are depicted in the act of doing their jobs which are not related to sex or pleasing the men, which is refreshing. I do think this film inadvertently skirts the problem with totally objectifying or trivializing its woman characters by just keeping its focus on the male friendships—it’s not an ideal solution, obviously, but I’d rather have no women at all than women who are talked down to on the screen. That said, I was quite surprised at how open this film was to a more queer view of said male bonding, an across the board homosociality that permeates its entirety, and no one balks at it, which was much more progressive than I was expecting. Did you notice that too, Erin?
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