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93
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82
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73
Kung Fu Panda
72
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71
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70
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65
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
64
Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist
63
Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2, The
62
Burn After Reading
60
Traitor
58
Express, The
58
City of Ember
58
Body of Lies
57
Journey to the Center of the Earth 3D
57
Flash of Genius
55
House Bunny, The
54
Quarantine
54
Get Smart
53
Rocker, The
53
Lucky Ones, The
52
Longshots, The
51
Mamma Mia!
49
Family That Preys, The
47
Swing Vote
47
X-Files: I Want to Believe, The
46
Lakeview Terrace
45
Blindness
43
Meet Dave
43
Death Race
43
Eagle Eye
41
Beverly Hills Chihuahua
39
Nights in Rodanthe
37
Miracle at St. Anna
36
Space Chimps
36
Righteous Kill
36
Fly Me to the Moon
35
How to Lose Friends & Alienate People
35
Star Wars: The Clone Wars
35
Mirrors
34
My Best Friend's Girl
27
Women, The
26
Babylon A.D.
24
Bangkok Dangerous
20
American Carol, An
15
Disaster Movie
15
College
Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.

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86
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85
Edge of Heaven, The
84
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83
U2 3D
83
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82
Happy-Go-Lucky
82
Tell No One
82
Frozen River
82
Rachel Getting Married
81
Ballast
80
Encounters at the End of the World
80
Moving Midway
79
Visitor, The
78
Last Mistress, The
76
Pool, The
73
Girl Cut in Two, A
73
Obscene
73
Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson
72
Secret, A
72
Transsiberian
72
I Served the King of England
71
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68
August Evening
68
Ashes of Time Redux
66
Elegy
66
When Did You Last See Your Father?
65
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64
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64
In Search of a Midnight Kiss
63
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63
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63
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63
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63
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62
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62
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62
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62
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61
Wackness, The
61
Brick Lane
57
Towelhead
57
Amazing Truth About Queen Raquela, The
57
Sixty Six
57
RocknRolla
56
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55
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55
Religulous
55
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55
Ping Pong Playa
53
Humboldt County
53
Allah Made Me Funny: Live in Concert
53
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52
Virtual JFK: Vietnam If Kennedy Had Lived
51
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50
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49
Children of Huang Shi, The
47
Choke
45
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44
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43
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41
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40
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37
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31
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28
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26
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xx
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xx
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xx
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xx
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xx
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xx
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xx
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Lower Learning
Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
|
Envy
DreamWorks Distribution LLC
FILM:
MPAA RATING: PG-13 for language and sexual/crude humor
Starring
Ben Stiller,
Jack Black,
Rachel Weisz,
Amy Poehler,
Christopher Walken,
Ariel Gade,
Sam Lerner,
and
Lily Jackson
Tim (Stiller) and Nick (Black) are best friends, neighbors and co-workers, whose equal footing is suddenly tripped up when one of Nick's harebrained get-rich-quick schemes actually succeeds: Vapoorizer, a spray that literally makes dog poop, or any other kind for that matter, evaporate into thin air. Tim, who had poo-pooed Nick's idea and passed on an opportunity to get in on the deal, can only watch as Nick's fortune -- and Tim's own envy -- grow to equally outrageous proportions. (DreamWorks)
| GENRE(S): |
Comedy
|
| WRITTEN BY: |
Steve Adams
|
| DIRECTED BY: |
Barry Levinson
|
| RELEASE DATE: |
DVD: September 28, 2004
Video: September 28, 2004
Theatrical: April 30, 2004
|
| RUNNING TIME: |
99 minutes, Color |
| ORIGIN: |
USA |

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
75
Christian Science Monitor
David Sterritt
The movie works fairly well as a pitch-dark comedy, and very well as a dead-on satire of upward mobility and its discontents.

75
Baltimore Sun
Michael Sragow
Quirky and enjoyable.

60
Film Threat
Rick Kisonak
It may not feature the funniest performances Stiller, Walken and Black have ever given but, these three guys giving performances just this funny is enough to make Envy a movie you'll end up kicking yourself for missing.

50
Washington Post
Ann Hornaday
One of those cinematic curiosities that almost always fade quickly, but that will usually find a devoted cult audience once it hits that peculiar Elysian Field known as the aftermarket.

50
The Hollywood Reporter
Michael Rechtshaffen
The laughs tend to come in fits and starts, built around individual set pieces rather than being generated organically out of the storytelling.

50
USA Today
Claudia Puig
Envy is in the unenviable position of saddling two of Hollywood's most talented comic actors with a script that doesn't do them justice.

50
New York Daily News
Elizabeth Weitzman
Envy is such an ugly emotion, perhaps it deserves an ugly movie. Barry Levinson's Envy fills the bill - a mean-spirited black comedy saturated with dog-poo jokes and only intermittent yowls of mirth.

50
Chicago Sun-Times
Roger Ebert
Black somehow feels reigned in; shaved and barbered, he's lost his anarchic passion and is merely playing a comic role instead of transforming it into a personal mission.

50
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
Rick Groen
[Walken's] every minute on screen is filled with that level of jittery invention, and, watching him at play, not even the flintiest temper could resist a wide grin. Envy can surely be a trial, but Saint Christopher is there to ease our troubled journey and see us smilingly home.

40
TV Guide
Ken Fox
Levinson, who has directed enough films to know better, should recognize a stinker of a script when he smells one: Instead clever laughs he serves up sloppy schtick, dead spots filled with lame ad-libbing and Walken crooning "The Happy Wanderer."

40
LA Weekly
John Patterson
Even the relatively successful pairing of neckless maestro of anxiety Stiller with the indomitably effervescent Black gets bogged down by Steve Adams' aimless screenplay. Would the Barry Levinson who once made "Diner" please wake up and pull himself together?

40
Village Voice
J. Hoberman
Ultimately more amusing than hilarious, and sometimes less than that.

40
Los Angeles Times
Kevin Crust
A woeful little comedy that runs out of steam shortly after its opening sequence.

40
Variety
Robert Koehler
Can't decide whether to be an eccentric black comedy or a middle-of-the-road diversion.

38
Chicago Tribune
Mark Caro
Envy is a shaggy dog-poop story that'll make you wish you could spray something at the screen to make it disappear.

38
Philadelphia Inquirer
Steven Rea
Envy makes a pretty entertaining three-minute trailer. If only they'd left it at that.

38
New York Post
Jonathan Foreman
There are a few chuckles here and there, and there are odd wisps of cleverness in the script by Steve Adams, but for the most part, Envy is a film that doesn't know where it's going.

30
The New York Times
Stephen Holden
Squandered in foolish horseplay and on a story that zigzags so far out of control that it feels as if the screenwriter, Steve Adams, pasted together a bunch of zany notions in a frantic search for confusion.

30
Washington Post
Sara Gebhardt
With all the dog dung in Envy, it's almost too easy to generalize that it stinks. But it does, unfortunately, despite the big-name actors in its cast.

30
Chicago Reader
Jonathan Rosenbaum
With so many dubious elements at play, even the half-good ideas get lost in the shuffle.

30
Film Threat
Pete Vonder Haar
The most telling symptom of bad comedy is pretty easy to diagnose: no laughs.

25
Rolling Stone
Peter Travers
Environmentalists are up in arms. "Where did the shit go?" they want to know. The answer is painfully obvious: into the screenplay.

25
Entertainment Weekly
Owen Gleiberman
Leaves you with the dismaying sensation that Levinson, who should probably be off making his own version of ''The Player,'' has instead crafted a comedy of self-loathing, burying himself in a movie that deserves to be Vapoorized.

25
ReelViews
James Berardinelli
It's remarkably appropriate that Envy is about turds, because that's what the movie is.

25
San Francisco Chronicle
Mick LaSalle
The film is neither fish nor fowl nor some arresting new entity, but a lumpish coagulation of conflicting impulses and unrealized gestures.

20
Austin Chronicle
Marc Savlov
Envy feels like a comedy in search of a drama in search of some sort of lugubrious existential meaning; it never quite seems to know where it's going to head next, and neither will the audience.

20
Empire
Jo Berry
You'd think it'd be hilarious. Think again.

16
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
William Arnold
Stiller and Black have the chemistry of fingernails-on-blackboard and the movie is disastrously unfunny.

12
Boston Globe
Ty Burr
A weirdly airless disaster, a turkey so insistently DOA that the dialogue serves as its own epitaph.

10
The Onion (A.V. Club)
Keith Phipps
In short, every element suggests Envy ought to be amusing, but the only comparably disastrous movie in recent memory involves Ben Affleck, Jennifer Lopez, and a rapping retarded man.


The average user rating for this movie is 4.8 (out of 10) based on 18 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
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