“Envy” is about fecal matter and a dead horse. One more time, for those of you (myself included) who will watch anything starring Ben Stiller and Jack Black: “Envy” is about fecal matter and a dead horse.
Not even they can carry this movie, directed, improbably, by Barry Levinson, who has never made anything so lacking in taste and genuine humor.
“Envy” has been in the can (pun intended) for months, and it’s easy to see why the movie was held back for so long.
It’s about fecal matter and a dead horse.
OK, that’s the last time I’ll say that.
Mr. Black and Mr. Stiller play best friends Nick Vanderpark and Tim Dingman. Nick has an entrepreneurial brainstorm: the “Vapoorizer,” a spray-on-doo-doo chemical concoction that makes the stuff disappear.
Tim passes up the chance for ground-floor investment. Nick gets mega-rich. Tim gets jealous.
Tim lives across the street from Nick, who, so loyal is he, builds an obscene, nouveau-riche palazzo on the very same plot where his old house stood. Gazillionaire or not, he wants to stay in the ’hood.
Resentful of his friend’s fortune, Tim is reminded of the lack of his own every time he walks out of his house. So, one night, drunk and newly unemployed, Tim fires one of Nick’s target-practice arrows and accidently hits Nick’s prize possession, a white steed named Corky.
The kill sends Tim into the Stillerian Method of Comic Desperation. He employs a bum he met in a bar (a bedraggled Christopher Walken, doing the Walkenian Method of Comic Kookiness) to help conceal the accident from Nick and from his wife (Rachel Weisz), who has Lady Macbeth potential.
Aside from a crass subplot involving Nick’s wife (Amy Poehler) — she campaigns for the California state Senate but is dogged by the nature of her husband’s unorthodox invention — that’s about the sum total of “Envy.”
Sorry to pun again, but it beats a dead horse.
With Mr. Stiller and Mr. Black as its stars, the movie can’t help but provoke the occasional laugh. Mr. Black doing an infomercial is funny.
It also was nice to see Mr. Black playing a genuinely nice and decent guy here; his character, generous to a fault, is the only likable thing about “Envy.”
It’s about fecal matter and a dead horse.
Sorry. Just wanted to make quadruple-sure you knew that.
*1/2
TITLE: “Envy”
RATING: PG-13 (Profanity; crude humor; sexuality)
CREDITS: Directed by Barry Levinson. Produced by Mr. Levinson and Paula Weinstein. Written by Steve Adams. Cinematography by Tim Maurice-Jones.
RUNNING TIME: 99 minutes.
WEB SITE: https://www.vapoorizer.com
MAXIMUM RATING: FOUR STARS
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