ENVY
Released: April 30, 2004
Shot back in 2002 and finally released in the spring of 2004, the new Barry Levinson "comedy" is neither new nor a comedy. In another of the string of Ben Stiller movies hitting theatres in rapid succession ("Duplex", "Nobody Knows Anything", "Along Came Polly", "Starsky & Hutch" and "Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story"), "Envy" teams Stiller with Jack Black in a story that I wish I could have been a fly on the wall for the pitch and greenlight sessions. Black's character invents Vapoorizer, a spray that literally makes dog poop, or any other kind for that matter, evaporate into thin air. Stiller's character doesn't want to invest in the "product" and misses out on the riches Black earns, hence the envy in the title. There were not any bust-a-gut laugh-out-loud scenes though some parts were fun to watch. It seems that the trend that began in "Starsky & Hutch" with Stiller shooting a horse continues here. He shoots a horse with an arrow, buries it then exhumes it only to let it fly off the top of a car into a flooded river. I wonder how the PETA folks liked this movie? Some decent cast here though, including a radiant Rachel Weisz, an almost Nicole Kidman-like Amy Poehler (of "Saturday Night Live" extraction) and Christopher Walken (who'll act in anything if you give him a paycheck). Maybe this will work better on home video. But in the theatre, there was virtually no reaction from the audience.
99 Minutes
Columbia/Sony/DreamWorks SKG