Envy movie review, Barry Levinson, Jack Black, Ben Stiller, Rachel Weisz, Christopher Walken, Amy Poehler. Review by Rob Blackwelder ©SPLICEDwire
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POOPER STUPOR
A scene from 'Envy'
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"ENVY"
* star
99 minutes | Rated: PG-13
WIDE: Friday, April 30, 2004
Directed by Barry Levinson

Starring Jack Black, Ben Stiller, Rachel Weisz, Amy Poehler, Christopher Walken



This film is on the Worst of 2004 list.


 COUCH CRITIQUE
   SMALL SCREEN SHRINKAGE: 10%
   WIDESCREEN: NOT NECESSARY

Even if you like the one-note over-acting of Jack Black and Ben Stiller, even their worst solo movies have more laughs than this bomb. Rent whatever's next to it on the shelf and you have a 90% chance of doing better.

   VIDEO RELEASE: 09.28.2004



 OTHER REVIEWS/COMING SOON
 
  • Barry Levinson
  • Jack Black
  • Ben Stiller
  • Rachel Weisz
  • Christopher Walken
  • Amy Poehler


  •  LINKS for this film
    Official site
    at movies.yahoo.com
    at Rotten Tomatoes
    at Internet Movie Database
    Watch the trailer (apple.com)
    Black, Stiller left to their own meager devices in (literally) crappy, practically scriptless comedy about 'Envy'

    By Rob Blackwelder

    Even if you have not yet tired of the eye-bugging, eyebrow-dancing, class-clown schtick of Jack Black or the eye-bugging, eyebrow-dancing, fretful straight-man schtick of Ben Stiller, the first collaboration between these two one-trick ponies is still unlikely to draw a single laugh for its slapdash story of one-dimensional "Envy" run amok.

    The pair star as K-Mart-class stiffs in the sandpaper trade who are best pals and neighbors in an under-the-power-lines cul-de-sac of the San Fernando 'burbs. A fusspot pragmatic by temperament, Stiller slowly turns bitter green when Black -- a wild-eyed daydreamer full of half-baked inventions and get-rich-quick schemes -- gets rich quick by helping conceive an aerosol spray that makes pet poop evaporate.

    Soon Stiller and family (Rachel Weisz is wasted in a do-nothing role as his wife) are living across the street from the gaudy uber-mansion that replaced Black's tract home, complete with a carousel on the grounds and Corinthian-styled stables for a white horse that's always getting loose and nibbling on their apple tree. When jealous Stiller accidentally kills the horse in a midnight fit of drunken archery (Black's yard also boasts a bow-and-arrow target range), he tries to hide the body with the help of a weird hobo (Christopher Walken), and hilarity is supposed to ensue.

    But normally reliable director Barry Levinson ("Bandits," "Wag the Dog," "Rain Man") seems to be asleep at the wheel. Subplots flail around like an unminded garden hose turned on full blast -- one involving Black's dingbat wife ("Saturday Night Live's" Amy Poehler) running for "congress, or state senate, or whatever." Some scenes -- entire acts, really -- end so abruptly that parts of the picture play as if a reel went missing. And the actors have clearly been left to their own meager devices, the result of which is a cobbled-together mess of scenery-chewing high jinks and under-rehearsed improvisation.

    Throughout it all the air is thick with denial about the punchlines that do come from the screenplay (penned by professional script doctor Steve Adams) -- contrived clunkers like the chant of protesters at Poehler's plot-padding campaign rallies, who for no explored reason demand an explanation of her husband's product: "Where does the (poop) go? We want to know!"

    As the end of "Envy" nears, secrets are revealed and conflicts resolved in expository episodes of ridiculous ease (e.g. Walken, who had been blackmailing Stiller over the dead horse, just changes his mind and leaves), and the movie coasts to the closing credits as Stiller and Black run out of ad-libbing steam.

    Where are those funnier-than-the-feature out-takes -- which often accompany such lifeless comedies -- when you really need them?







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