Movie Review: Envy

Envy (2004) 

Directed by Barry Levinson

Written by Steve Adams 

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

Release Date April 30th, 2004

Published April 30th, 2004 

Imagine a Hollywood pitch meeting where a producer first tells you that he has Barry Levinson attached to direct the film being pitched. Then the producer tells you that Mr. Levinson has drawn the interest of both Jack Black and Ben Stiller. This is a can't-lose pitch and you don't even know what the movie is about. The result of this can't-miss pitch is Envy, a comedy about best friends, one of whom becomes a millionaire while the other remains an everyman schlub. Somehow, despite its can't-miss pitch, it misses badly.

Ben Stiller is Tim Dingman and Jack Black is Nick Vanderpark. Tim and Nick have been best friends and neighbors for years. Their wives are friends, their kids are friends and the guys even work together at a sandpaper factory. Tim is a dedicated worker but Nick is more of a dreamer with a tendency to nod off at times. Nick spends most of his time dreaming up wacky get rich quick schemes and his latest is a doozy.

After seeing some guy on the street cleaning up dog-doo with a rubber glove and a baggy, Nick is struck with an idea. It's a spray that would make dog-doo disappear. Well it's not an invention yet, as Tim is quick to point out, all Nick has is an idea with a name, Va-Poo-Rize. Regardless of Tim's discouragement, Nick offers Tim the chance to be his fifty-fifty partner for a minimal investment. Tim, not surprisingly turns him down but ends up kicking himself when Nick's idea becomes a reality and he becomes filthy rich.

Despite his riches, Nick remains in the neighborhood. He buys out most of the neighbors surrounding his and Tim's homes and builds a mansion that fills an entire city block directly in front of Tim's house. While Tim has to get up every morning and trudge to the sandpaper factory, Nick is riding his great white horse everywhere, making sure to wave to Tim every morning as he leaves.

Tim has trouble at home, where his wife Debbie (Rachel Weisz) has left him, she can't forget how Tim turned down Nick's partnership idea. Tim is fired from the sandpaper factory after blowing up at his boss and soon he is hanging out with a bum called the J Man (Christopher Walken) at a dive bar. As the bum buys him drinks, Tim becomes increasingly angry at Nick and when he gets home, he intends on letting Nick know it. Instead, he accidentally kills Nick's horse, which kicks the plot into an entirely different and strange direction.

This is a typical Ben Stiller character prone to humiliation, fits of uncontrollable rage and self-deprecating physical comedy. Stiller is funny in this familiar comic persona though it would be nice to see him try something different.

This however, is not a typical Jack Black character and that is where the film goes wrong. In Envy, the comic whirling dervish that is Jack Black is slowed to the point of normalcy. Black's character has all sorts of wacky outfits and a Jim Carrey circa Ace Ventura haircut but his character is a neutered version of the manic over the top comic we have enjoyed in School Of Rock and High Fidelity. It doesn't help that Black's character is often shoved well into the background as the plot spins out of control around the horse and the bum.

Christopher Walken is a welcome presence playing yet another classic Walken character with one or two of those way out there monologues that only he could deliver. However, his character is a distraction from the center of the film, which should be Stiller and Black.

Subplots are added and discarded as director Barry Levinson spins wildly from one comic idea to the next, looking for a purpose. The horse thing takes up too much of the film, while a more intriguing idea hangs just off screen as a controversy erupts over where the dog-doo goes when the spray makes it disappear. It's gross but it's a funnier idea than anything that happens with the horse. The dog-doo idea is introduced and discarded and then brought back without explanation and then left unresolved as if it were a comic idea that they thought worked but did not and the filmmakers were forced to edit around it.

The whole film feels like it was assembled in the editing room without a clear purpose of what the filmmakers had filmed. Thus, there are some funny moments in the film but no cohesiveness to the plot. It's a series of ideas with no central purpose. The ending is especially slapdash and unsatisfying. There may have been a good film in there somewhere but what ended up in the final cut is basically all potential and no payoff.