एंवी

When I first heard about a movie with Ben Stiller and Jack Black, yeah, I got my hopes up. I love these guys. Then I'd heard it started getting terrible reviews and my hopes sank. I think this is a necessary step to enjoying the movie. Because whoever gives it a negative review is someone who was clearly expecting a different movie, and rather than enjoy what they got, they complained about what they didn't. The comedy is SUPER dead-pan. If you're expecting Ben Stiller out of 'Something about Mary' or Jack Black out of 'Tenacious D', stop. Jack Black, by Jack Black standards, is in a coma in this movie. While some people want to see him scream and yell and all that (which is great), I found it just as funny that he was being 3/4's serious.

Quite unexpectedly, Christopher Walken made this movie. His personality was spot-on. This movie quite reminded me of another movie, which I can't quite remember unfortunately, but in some ways it also reminded me of Office Space. The dry, normal guy humor. "What would you do if you had a million dollars?" "Two chicks at the same time." And in some ways it reminds me of another recent Ben Stiller movie, Starsky and Hutch. It took me awhile to get into Starsky, because I thought it was meant to be a parody. Once I realised it was "serious" I had a lot more fun with it. And I laughed as much as Starsky, if not more, in Envy.

"Envy" bombed at the box office in 2004, but that doesn't mean it's not worth watching (or owning). Jack Black and Ben Stiller play neighbors & best friends in Southern California who work at a sandpaper factory. Black strikes it rich with an invention and builds a vast mansion where his former home was. Of course, this stirs the envy of Stiller who gets mixed-up with an eccentric vagabond, played by Christopher Walken. Amy Poehler and Rachel Weisz play the wives.

While "Envy" isn't very laugh-out-loud funny, it's consistently amusing and the story is good enough to maintain your attention. Walken stands out as the offbeat bum. What I like best is the film's originality; I really can't think of any other films like it. Maybe that's why it bombed. I also like the way "Envy" pokes fun at materialism and everything that goes with it, e.g. envy. In addition, it's nice to watch a comedy like this without overt sleaze and overkill cussing, like 2007's "The Heartbreak Kid" (I don't mind realistic cussing in movies, but when it's overdone it's neither impressive nor funny; it's just stoo-pid and smacks of lazy writing).

Weisz and Poehler are as gorgeous as ever, but they're decidedly peripheral and the filmmakers never take advantage of their presence. Regardless, "Envy" is solid, original amusement.

The film runs 99 minutes and was shot in Santa Clarita, L.A. & Culver Studios, CA, and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

GRADE: B

In ENVY, Ben Stiller plays Tim whos neighbor, Nick(Jack Black) invents an item called "Vapoorize". When you spray it on dog poo, it disappears. After vapoorize becomes a hit, Tim get's envious of Nick.

I'm surprised at the terrible reviews this is getting. I mean, I can't say it was more than 2 and a half out of 4, but it wasn't terrible. It was uneven, somewhat funny, a bit flighty, and occasionally realistic. The whole thing with Christopher Walken's role had nothing to do with the story. Whenever he came on screen, I was disappointed. And although this is occasionally funny, due to the cast, it's not funny enough.

ENVY-- **1/2 outta ****

PG-13: language, brief comic violence, and some sexual/crude humor.

Tim Dingman and Nick Vanderpark are neighbours and colleagues working down at 3M in middle-management jobs with vague prospects for more. Tim scores highly across the board on his performance chart, but dreamer Nick flunks on focus. Constantly discussing his pipe-dreams, Nick has worn down Tim to the point where he doesn't listen any more. However when Nick does hit on something, Tim ignores the chance to invest. Eighteen months later and Nick is rich beyond his wildest dreams and has covered his house across the street into a mansion. Meanwhile Tim has been left feeling inadequate and jealous of Nick's success.

I'm surprised by the amount of hate put aside for this film, not because it is bad but more because, having seen it, I'm struggling to have any strong feelings towards it one way or another as it is all very bland and misfiring. I can understand why professional critics laid into it; it is not that often that they sees stars fall so when someone has a high-profile flop, it is almost like a competition to write the most savage review – and of course the public mostly follow suit at first. Anyway, I'm not quite sure what the plot is here because it seems to be being made up as it goes along and there is no flow to it.

Worse than this, there are no real laughs either. Occasionally (and I mean very occasionally) there are some slightly amusing moments but mostly it is just one misfired attempt at humour after another and the overwhelming impact on me was one of inducing boredom. The cast are wasted with the material, which is where the weakness lies. Stiller needed to produce a real person and then move him into extremes in the way that has worked for him before. Here though he cannot find the person and instead he just mugs his way through. Black is left on the sidelines to occasionally act like a big kid, he doesn't suit the role and he deserved something better but he is nothing compared to the waste of the fine actress Weisz, who hopefully at least had fun on this cause I can't imagine this film brought her anything else. Walken is OK but only because he is being "Walken" throughout – which is still fun because he is now like someone doing a really good impression of Christopher Walken, which is fun I guess.

Overall then a bad film but not in the ranting "burning torches in the street" sense that some reviewers have done but just in the "pointless wasted of time with nothing at all of value" sense. At best it amuses but mostly every aspect of it misfires most of the time and it only succeeded in making me bored.

I really don't get the hate from this movie, sure it's not an instant classic, but there is some great humor especially at the beginning. I'll admit the humor dies down a bit in the second half, but I still think it was a fun story. If I had not seen the scores here I would have assumed it was at worst a high 5/10 but probably a low 6/10, a 4.8 seems crazy to me.

If you enjoy the actors and like 2000's comedies, I think it makes a great lazy afternoon movie.