Though it might seem frivolous and forgettable on the surface, an Entourage movie is actually quite complex. At least for me. The simplest way to talk about is this. Imagine watching a 4 day-long movie. Once you got to the final 90 minutes, odds are you’d have a much more personal and vested interest in the material than someone who watched the final 90 minutes alone. Such is the blessing, and curse, of Entourage.

It’s also a show that comes with ton of baggage both from its long run on HBO as well as the current public perception of it. And now, there’s a movie of this show that’s been off the air for several years. Below, we’ll look at the Entourage movie from multiple perspectives and see that it’s a movie worth discussing in more ways than you probably think.

A Look Back

The TV show Entourage ran for 8 seasons, each of varying length. Fans who spent all that time with those characters (roughly 100 hours of storytelling) are almost universally going to love the film, which exactly replicates the fun, light tone of the best of series and serves as a much more fitting, satisfying conclusion than the actual finale. Those people will probably also know what they’re in for.

When Entourage debuted in 2004, it was a different time. The economy hadn’t collapsed. Society was less sensitive and a show about four white men flourishing in Hollywood was seen as mostly-harmless entertainment. A fantasy where the anything was possible, the party never ends, and four nobodies from Queens can make their way to the top. Yet, they didn’t really work to get to the top. They just appeared there, and that gave them a chip on their shoulder and a desire to work hard to stay there. Nevertheless, show me a person who doesn’t want to live the life of movie star Vincent Chase and I’ll show you a liar. Maybe they’d do it differently, but they’d still do it.

To like the Entourage movie is to understand its roots. Written and directed by show creator Doug Ellin, it’s a show about friendship, a show about family, and most importantly a show about movies. I don’t think there’s ever been a show that’s been as big a fan as the movie making process than Entourage. There are other shows about the business, but for eight seasons, Entourage explored and poked fun at the Hollywood machine with detail that’s second to none. Full episodes of the show were devoted to screenwriting, reading scripts, agent quarrels, managerial positioning, directorial changes, press junkets and battles in the editing room.

Yet the public perception of the show is now that it was Jersey Shore: Los Angeles, a bunch of “Bros” doing their hair, burning their money, and treating women like objects for the hell of it. Does the show have one or two of those aspects? Unquestionably. Episodes of the show are also dedicated to strip club visits, brothels and threesomes. But none of that was ever without consequences, without empowering the women, or set up as a distraction of the real point of the show. That is: friends will be friends, even in the most incredible of circumstances.

All this is preamble to reiterate the Entourage movie is biggest, best Entourage episode ever. If you didn’t watch the show, or have a skewed perception of it, the movie does little to win you over. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, though it’ll be seen as such.