Entourage - B-

Rated R, 95 minutes

Charming and crude, "Entourage" should most please fans of the TV series

If you've ever considered a career in Hollywood, the charming new comedy "Entourage," based on the 2004-2011 Emmy-award winning HBO series of the same, may persuade you otherwise. Fast, loose profane and loaded with star cameos, "Entourage" should most please fans of that series, yet it's still fun even for those unfamiliar with the series and you'll find it impossible to hate these guys, in spite of all the problems they cause. The film continues to profile the career of movie star Vincent Chase (Adrian Grenier) and his entourage of friends, Drama (Kevin Dillon), Turtle (Jerry Ferrara) and Eric (Kevin Connolly). His agent Ari Gold (Jeremy Piven), now studio head, bankrolls Vince's directorial debut with a $100 million budget but still goes $15 million over, throwing the film in disarray. To make matters worse, the film's financiers, a slick Texas billionaire Larsen McCredle (Billy Bob Thornton) and his buffoonish son Travis (Haley Joel Osment, unrecognizable from his "Sixth Sense" days), step in, only making matters worse. Directed and written by "Entourage" TV series creator Doug Ellin and co-produced by Mark Wahlberg (who also produced the TV series, and this is loosely based on some of his experiences), is relaxed and entertaining on a Hollywood-insider style level, even if it offers the same thing as what the TV show offered, though the plotting is thin and predictable, with a feel-good ending that feels tacked on. Earning that hard R-rating in big, crude way, it does still offer Piven as the colorfully acerbic, fast-talking Ari Gold, who much like in the TV show, provides the movie with its most memorable moments (and much of what he says can't be printed here, but you get the idea) as he helps guide Vince and the boys to bigger stardom in a unique, big-budgeted movie. Of the other guys, Dillon provides some of movie funny/sad moments as the washed-up actor of a more famous actor who may finally get his chance at stardom. As for all those cameos, which were also a big part of the TV show, most are throwaways, but there are a few good ones, most memorably from fighter Ronda Rousey, in a slightly extended cameo, Wahlberg, Gary Busey and Liam Neeson. I didn't care for the upbeat ending that feels different than the rest of the movie, but it leaves it open to more of these things. The engaging "Entourage" isn't revelatory and it entertains by riding on its thin, crude appeal, but maybe that's all that's needed to be successful in Hollywood.