For some reason, Entourage holds a reputation for being up there with the most hilarious series in the history of television. It isn't. What it is, in actuality, is an embarrassing celebration of the excesses of fame, wealth, misogyny and being a complete pr*ck. No-one has ever put better the problems of Entourage than critic Mark Kermode in his review of the filmic spin-off (the fact that this despicable show was popular enough to merit a Hollywood film is enough of an indication that it is unbelievably overrated):
In this post-humour universe, these d*ckheads are heroes, universally loved, lavishly indulged. While films such as The Player satirised the vacuity of Hollywood, Entourage merely revels in it, napalming the screen with waves of pornographic consumerist vulgarity cars, asses, cars, tits, boats, asses, cars dredged directly from Tinseltowns festering scrotum... A swath of self-congratulatory celebs flash their smug mugs in a world so grotesquely chauvinistic you want Imperator Furiosa to arrive in a War Machine and nuke the place. Believe me, The Human Centipede was more sensitively attuned to issues of gender politics. And it had better jokes.
"Oh, but the film wasn't as good as the show!" detractors will cry. They'd be wrong. Both the series and the film deal with exactly the same problematic themes, whether you think one is funnier than the other or not. Entourage is lazy comedy for the reality TV/everyone's a celeb era.
