Release Date: April 30, 2004
Starring: Jack Black, Ben Stiller, Rachel Weisz, Christopher Walken
Directed by: Barry Levinson
Written by: Steve Adams
Distributed by: DreamWorks
MPAA Rating: PG-13 (language, sexual and crude humor)
It would be too easy and almost unfair to readers use a line like “I envy those who haven’t seen Envy,” but then again, Barry Levinson’s awful comedy didn’t make a very big effort to be creative itself. In fact, a solid 90 minutes of dull clichés would have been more enjoyable than the experience of watching this completely unfunny and utterly pointless film about two best friends at odds with each other after one of them strikes it rich. The only thing it has to offer is a few briefly amusing moments from its stars (and those mostly from Christopher Walken), but those parts are needles lost in a haystack three miles wide. Essentially, the entire movie is hopeless.
Funnymen Jack Black and Ben Stiller, two actors who are usually on solid ground in a studio comedy, are opposite each other here and the characters they play have no surprise traits whatsoever. Stiller once again plays a put-upon stickler, someone who thinks he’s doing everything right but ends up falling on his face and is unable to deal with defeat. And also true to form is Black, a silly, slobbish fellow who somehow gets by on acting irresponsibly and carelessly. Unfortunately, the combination of both characters here is not so much clever and creatively resourceful as it is painfully sterile and trite.
That’s due in part to the atrocious writing. The story Black and Stiller find themselves in deals with an invention called Va-poo-rize. It’s an aerosol spray that chemically disintegrates dog droppings (or poop of any other kind), and Black’s character is the one who thinks it up and eventually manufactures it. Stiller, of course, is immediately doubtful (as most normal people would be) of the idea and refuses to invest any money or effort into his friend’s dreams of becoming rich. Somehow everyone else disagrees and fully supports Black’s crackpot idea, and when he becomes a millionare Stiller is left in the dust and turns completely envious and distraught.
The plot is already silly beyond the point of reason, but there’s nothing within the material itself to give the movie a reason to exist. Once the premise is introduced, things literally happen randomly and with no purpose. Black owns a pet horse that strolls into Stiller’s yard from time to time, and during a moment of drunken depression Stiller accidentally kills it with a bow and arrow. Almost two thirds of the story revolve around that situation, from the animal’s failed burial to its equally unsuccessful transportation on top of a car during a rainstorm. It’s all so moronic that even Stiller’s perfected down-on-his-luck everyman persona and Christopher Walken’s untouchable talent feel painfully wasted.
The story should’ve taken any of the other, say, thousand possible routes in this tale of jealous friendship instead of channeling all of its attention toward a stupid horse. The four-legged beast has barely two minutes of screen time before it becomes an integral part of the conflict, so there’s no reason for us or the characters to be concerned with it.
There’s also some running joke about a dessert dish called “flong” that’s about as funny as houseflies fornicating (which, come to think of it, would have been a fitting bit of humor in this movie). Nothing within the plot flows together, and barely a single piece of comedy boosts its entertainment value.
After maybe two half-amusing scenes with Walken (both of which are due to his knack for mocking his own unusual, syncopated delivery), there is absolutely nothing to remember Envy by. The level of unpleasantness reaches headache-inducing heights when the end nears, and hopefully something, no matter what it is, can give the movie at least a hint of a purpose. But there’s nothing of the sort, and instead things get a little worse thanks to an overlong speech of rambling apologies from Stiller.
He doesn’t apologize to us, though, and neither does director Levinson, who has certainly slipped in talent after Rain Man and even the more recent and relatively pleasing Bandits. Envy is his worst yet, as it is Black’s and Stiller’s. And nothing short of a can of Va-poo-rize can erase this from each of their records.
-- Andy Zientek (zfilm@earthlink.net)