As Joel Stein notes in the latest issue of TIME, the TV version of Entourage started way back in 2004, “before the bro-volution.”
Back then—long before Entourage was turned into a movie, which arrives in theaters on Wednesday—the HBO look at a pack of bros felt both fresh and foreign. But, even then, there was something about the show audiences could identify with, even if they weren’t familiar with bro culture: the fact that anyone watching at home is more likely to be a member of an entourage than to be the one at the center of all that attention. As TIME’s James Poniewozik pointed out in his first 2004 review of the show, that “more attainable yet rarely celebrated dream” was the point of the show:
A few of us have the talent or luck to become rock stars, billionaires or Presidents. The rest of us can only hope to be the cousin of the rock star, the best friend of the billionaire, the embarrassing sibling of the President.
More than a decade later, no matter what’s up with bro culture, that fact hasn’t changed—and movie audiences can find out soon whether it’s still worth celebrating.
Read the full review, here in the TIME Vault: Land of the Freeloaders
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